


Zwart als inkt

by KingLilith



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: EWE, Gen, Grimmauld Place, Healing, Post-War, Pureblood Culture, Renovating, Wandless Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-01-31 02:00:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 28,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12665988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingLilith/pseuds/KingLilith
Summary: After the war Harry wants some time to himself to heal and sort through things, so he starts renovating Gimmauld place to make it his home. He discovers things about himself he never knew along the way.





	1. The beginning

Grimmauld place was looking pretty miserable. Harry felt like turning around and going back, perhaps to the Weasleys or he could rent a room at the Leaky.  He took a deep breath and steeled himself, no, he was not going back. Word would get out if he went to the Leaky and within a few hours he would be swamped with ‘fans’ and going to the Weasleys wasn’t the best idea either; Molly had enough to worry about and besides, it was much harder to dodge Ginny if he lived with her.

It had been months since the war had ended, and most of the funerals and trials for the surviving death eaters and cohorts had been done with. Hogwarts was rebuilt and had started a new school year a few days ago with Mcgonagall as headmistress.

And now Harry was standing in front of Grimmauld place avoiding them all. Well, not avoiding. He just… needed some time to sort things out for himself. To get away from the adoring masses and pseudo historians who wanted him to recount every gory detail of the battles, away from the pressure of the ministry who wanted him to become an auror as soon as possible, from Hermione and Molly who wanted him to go back to Hogwarts for his last year, from Ron who just wanted to talk about quidditch and auror training, Ginny and the awkward maybes that hung around them, and just the pressure to be something he wasn’t in general.

He loved them, really, he just… needed some time to himself. In Sirius’ house, a _family_ house, even if the blood connection was only through his grandmother, he was Sirius heir and family was family, the blood mattered very little to Harry. He wanted to be here, he did, even if the place looked horrible. So he gave the front façade one last glance, tightened his grip on his suitcase, and stepped resolutely inside.

\- -

Apparently someone had been here to do some cleanup before him, at least spell-wise, because no ghost of Dumbledore greeted him, something he was immensely grateful for. He took a few steps forward into the dusty hall, gingerly a creeping feeling that something was off came over him. It was quiet. The whole house was absolutely silent, no footsteps on the stairs, no odd creaking in the attic, no... screaming. Harry turned his head to the side so fast he might have given himself whiplash. There, on the wall where she had always been was the portrait of Walburga Black, fast asleep.

He clutched his suitcase against his chest as if it could shield him from her screeching if she woke up. He quickly decided he was really, really hungry and as quietly as possible began to make his way towards the kitchens. He must have looked hilarious, tiptoeing in the hallway while gripping his bag and sending suspicious glances backwards to the portrait every few steps. But there was no one to see him, so Harry slipped into the kitchen and closed the door behind him as quietly as possible, giving a sigh of relief when it finally clicked shut.

He put his case down and looked around the kitchen from where he stood with his back against the door. It was a mess. It almost looked like an battle had taken place here; there were still some plates on the kitchen table with mouldy food in it, cupboards were thrown open and their contents strewn out over all available surfaces and there was some brown goo in the corner hidden behind the stove that seemed to actually be moving. Harry hoped it was moving because of a breeze or something, and not because it had gained consciousness through some obscure curse.

A closer look at the woodwork revealed that it had broken in some places, and had been completely splintered in others - perhaps a battle _had_ taken place here. Harry’s inspecting of the empty cupboards also revealed the lack of anything in them when he made a half-hearted attempt to look for cleaning supplies.

Harry surveyed the surrounding damage and just knew the rest of the house would be in an equally bad shape. He hadn’t really cared when he had been here with Ron and Hermione last time, but that had been war – and he also didn’t remember it being this bad. This was not a place fit to live in permanently, so he knew he needed help. The only cleaning spells he knew were the scouring charm and a few oddly specific ones like Tergo, the mending charm and a few others, but he needed a lot more than that if he ever wanted to clean up this mess magically.

So, he needed help. At the very least in finding cleaning supplies so he could do it manually. Which meant… Kreacher. He hadn’t seen Kreacher since the battle, and as far as Harry knew he was happy working in the Hogwarts kitchens. But Kreacher was a Black house-elf, and while Harry was not a proper black master by blood, he still wanted to offer Kreacher the option of working in the house he had loved so much. He had always meant to involve Kreacher somehow since he had decided he wanted to live here, but hadn’t counted on needing his advice like this. Plus, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to take the elf away from Hogwarts if he liked it there. But… what if Kreacher _wanted_ to work here? He had always been a fanatic about the Blacks and only left this place because Harry ordered him to. He wrestled silently with himself for a few moments and then quickly called out for the house-elf, surprising himself with the swift decision.

For a few seconds nothing happened and Harry felt almost relieved, when there was a loud crack and then Kreacher stood there, staring up at him.

“Master Harry called?”

“Hello Kreacher” Harry tried to smile at him “Uhm, how have you been?”

“I is being fine master Harry, there is being a lot of work at Hogwarts.”

“Right, that is- that is good to hear. Come sit down, I wanted- I wanted to talk to you about a few things” Harry said hesitantly. Kreacher narrowed his eyes suspiciously but sat down on the bench anyway, right on a green piece of mould that seemed to have tiny ears growing from it, making Harry wince.

“Alright, so-“ Harry took a big breath. “So I have decided I want to live here, at Grimmauld place I mean. This place has a lot of bad memories and definitely don’t agree with-“ Harry cut himself of, and tried again. “The point is, this was a family home, and I want to make it that again. Now, I know I’m not much of a family all by myself but that is not the point. I want to clean it and fix it.” He said, not sure if he was trying to convince himself or Kreacher with his words. “I want to restore the good parts and throw out the bad ones, and once that is done I want to live here. And I wanted to offer you the possibility of working with me on that and living here as well.”

Now Harry’s voice turned softer, and he looked at Kreacher. “This was your home, just like it will be mine, and I know you like it at Hogwarts so please do not think of this as an order, but if you want you can work and live here. I know how much you cared about Regulus, this house, its history and the Blacks in general, so I wanted to offer you a place here, working and living with me. Uhm, If you want it.”

Kreacher looked at him with big, hopeful eyes. “Master Harry is wanting to be living here? And restore glory to the Ancient and Noble house of Black, and have Kreacher be helping with it?”

“Uhm if you want, yeah.” Said Harry “I mean, you don’t have to if you like Hogwarts I-“

Kreacher let out a loud shriek “Yes! All the yeses! Kreacher is not be having to stay at Hogwarts anymore! Kreacher is missing the house very much master Harry” He confided.

Harry blinked rapidly at that. “Oh, I thought you liked it at Hogwarts?”

“Kreacher is just a kitchen elf, I is being old and slow most of the Hogwarts elfses is being much younger and faster. I is not being very useful” Kreacher said with drooping ears. Clearly not being able to imagine a worse fate than not being useful.

Harry said trying to smile winningly “We will be helping each other; I’ll have the speed, you the expertise. I mean, I know a lot about cleaning the muggle way, but not much about doing it with magic.” He poked a bit of fungus growing out of the table next to him with his wand. It looked like small stones, but popped like a soap bell when his wand touched it, spewing out little grey droplets, making Harry yank back his wand before any of it could touch it. “And somehow I think muggle means won’t quite cut it.”

“Well, I better starts showing master Harry then” Kreacher grinned up at him. And Harry couldn’t help but smile back.

\--

Starting on cleaning the kitchen was easier said than done. After a bit of back and forth with Kreacher Harry cast a scouring charm on the pebble like mould thing, only to have the spell neatly dodged by said fungus. “Well” he grumbled at Kreacher “We best start making a list on what supplies to buy, you’ll have to help me with that I think, I have no idea what to buy. Or even where, I guess. Would they sell cleaning stuff at the apothecary you reckon?”

“Oh the supplieses! I is going to check some of the thingses in the house” Kreacher said, who swiftly apparated away. Harry had no idea what ‘thingses’ Kreacher was going to check on, but hoped it would be something useful in wrangleling this mess that was supposed to be a kitchen in submission. He let loose a few scouring charm while trying to compile a mental list of the type of cleaning supplies they needed to buy. He was just contemplating actually going looking for some parchment to write it down when Kreacher returned with a loud pop.

“I is sorry master Harry” Kreacher said wringing his ears “There is no supplies left and I is…” His voice kept getting softer and softer until he was murmuring to himself about budget and shame, old age, magic, how the house would hate him and bad house-elfses that could not make the funds stretch. It looked like he was going to cry so Harry quickly cut him off.

“Well, that is nothing to worry about, buying a few cleaning supplies is not a problem. Now, what is this about a budget?”

That led to a long conversation with Kreacher about what he called ‘the household budget’.  Apparently most elves who belonged to a household had access to a monthly sum of galleons from which to buy groceries, do small repairs, buy cleaning supplies and other things that magic alone could not fix or was better done by hand, such as polishing silverware Harry was informed. Harry promised Kreacher he would sort out the vaults tomorrow, but it was already late and most shops would close soon anyway so no need to do it today. The conversation turned to the types of supplies and things that would be needed and it was quickly agreed that Kreacher would take care of it since Harry had no idea what most of that stuff was or where to get it.

In the end they agreed to start cleaning with magic today and worry about the rest tomorrow, though from the fretful looks Kreacher kept giving the broken cupboards he would only stop worrying about it when it was fixed.

Once they had that all sorted out Kreacher was eager to start cleaning right away, and started to attack some of the mould with blue sparks. When Harry tried to help him Kreacher send him such an evil look Harry almost took a step back. It was strongly suggested he’d leave the kitchen and go clean somewhere else. And so harry was summarily dismissed from the kitchens.

This left him here, standing in the foyer and not knowing what to do first. Maybe he should do something about Walburga’s portrait? Now that Kreacher was working with him he felt a lot better about trying to deal with Mrs. Black. She was quiet for now, but he didn’t fancy accidentally waking her up. Maybe he could just send a silencing charm her way? Ah, but none of the adults had done that when they lived here, so it mustn’t be able to stick or something, maybe he should write to Hermione to see if she knew anything that could-. Oh, right, he didn’t have an owl. And he shouldn’t and couldn’t go to Hermione for every little thing anyway. So okay, maybe leave that portrait for tomorrow, perhaps he would have some idea about how to deal with her later tonight.

It was only early in the afternoon, but Harry suddenly felt very tired when he glimpsed the mess that was called the living room. Or perhaps it was the dining room. Hmm, he remembered Ms. Weasley calling one of them the sitting room, maybe that was this one. Urgh, he didn’t even know what the room was called; let alone how to clean it. Perhaps he’d have better luck upstairs, which was mostly bedrooms and bathrooms anyway, right?

He spend a while sending souring charms at the staircase and then spend almost half an hour trying to get rid of the severed heads that hung there, eventually resorting to a blasting curse to destroy them. Almost at the top of the stairs he encountered a puddle of something that seemed to burn his shoe when he stepped in it, but a well placed Tergo took care of that, leaving the whole staircase a lot cleaner than it had been before, even if there was now a big hole in the wall. Harry rolled his shoulders, the scars there still hurt a bit when casting too much magic.

When he entered the first floor landing Harry immediately cast a few strong cleaning charms at the carpet, but it seemed like a lost cause. Perhaps it was better to just chuck the carpet out, it was ugly anyway. So he gave up and instead opened a few of the doors in the corridor to remind himself what was behind them. Ah, right, not just bedrooms. This one was called the drawing room he remembered; it had that awful tapestry in it.

He decided to move on to the next floor, perhaps it was best to clean the bedroom he and Ron had shared. But as he walked towards the staircase the hole he had created in the stairwell wall down below caught his eye. The grimy wallpaper and bits of plaster surrounding it made it look like some gruesome open wound. He wanted to move on but... it looked wrong. Like he had cut and wounded the house.

It took Harry almost an hour to fix it. And even then it looked decidedly odd. A piece of off-coloured bare wall that was visible through the hole in the wallpaper. It looked odd, but much better than the gaping hole had. He would probably have to replace the wallpaper anyway, so having the wall partly bare for a few days would not be so bad.

The next floor had that bedroom that he and Ron had shared, and Harry immediately decided that cleaning a bedroom would be his number one priority. He’d like to sleep on something non-moth-eaten tonight, and this was as good a place as any. Harry eyed the sheets dubiously, He wasn’t sure the thin material would survive his version of cleaning. Ah well, only one way to find out.

Harry had no idea how long he spend cleaning that room, but he only stopped when Kreacher came to inform him dinner was ready, and when he looked out the window it was already dark out. He surveyed his handiwork proudly. The walls and floor are bare, showing the wood beneath, all that remained of furniture was a bed, the fancy closet and dresser-thing, a soft-looking chair and a chest at the foot of the bed. The curtains had been a lost cause, but the sheets and pillow where clean and smelled fresh as a daisy. He grinned proudly at the room and then joined Kreacher for dinner, who immediately had him cast a few cleaning charms at himself “Master is being _filthy_.”

\--

When Harry returned to the bedroom after spending the rest of his evening cleaning the hallway and one of the bathrooms (and immediately used the clean bathroom to shower; it feels heavenly) he is absolutely exhausted. The cleaning had been slow work, and whenever he and Kreacher work in the same room the house-elf tried to drown him in information about the house and the Blacks. And while Harry does think it interesting, it all blurs together after a while. He never had much of a head for dates, especially not when tired.

Before Harry falls asleep he decides that he likes the bare woodwork of the room, much better than that ugly purple velvet everything seems to be covered with. He makes a mental note to discuss with Kreacher exposing the wood in other rooms as well, and then drifts off.

\--

He wakes up because of the noises coming from downstairs, and before he is fully awake Harry had already grabbed his wand and sprinted down the stairs. Harry burst into the kitchen, only to find Kreacher mid-battle with a familiar owl, both frozen comically and wide-eyed. Harry burst into a somewhat crazed laughing fit, lowering his wand.

Clearly the noise had been the screeching of the owl, and from the way Kreacher glared at the animal it had not listened to Kreachers instructions to calm down. After a few moments of silence Kreacher declared that Harry might have breakfast now he was awake and went to the stove to fix him something. So while Kreacher was busy Harry sat down at the now much cleaner table (he shot a suspicious look at the pebble like fungus at the other end of the table that stubbornly remained even after Kreachers frantic cleaning) and relieved Hermione’s owl of the letter.

The letter turned out to be mostly Hermione rambling about how it was to be back at Hogwarts studying and how strange it was he and Ron were not with her (and how odd is was to date Ron long-distance, Harry read between the lines). She also wrote about how she had decided to keep S.P.E.W. alive and continue to fight for house-elf rights, though Harry thought she sounded much more sensible about it than she had in the beginning. The letter ended with a plea to write and a nicely worded but strong suggestion that Harry being on his own in Grimmauld Place was a bad idea.

Harry scratched a quick reply back (yes I’m fine, I’ll try to write but don’t have an owl, and how are your classes? I don’t mind helping out with S.P.E.W., Kreacher is living with me now.) before giving it to Hermione’s owl and watching how Kreacher, with a satisfied grin, threw both owl and letter out the window.

With breakfast and the letter to Hermione out of the way he wondered what to do next, he wanted to wait for the morning rush at Gringots to disperse before he went to inquire about the fund, or set up a new one if necessary. He should probably start cleaning, but it was difficult to decide what to give priority.

He softly called for Kreacher’s attention, who immediately dropped the dishes he was cleaning and gave Harry his full attention.

 “Right, so, I had been thinking...” Harry trailed off. “Truth is, I have no idea about half the rooms in this house, I haven’t even been _inside_ of most of them despite having stayed here a few times before. I have no idea what the difference is between a drawing room and a breakfast room, what they are used for or which one I should prioritise cleaning first. So, if you have the time I would like for you to show me the house, the whole house. That way we can make a list about what needs to be done that we can prioritise later.”

This statement lead to a few minutes of Kreacher squeaking and praising him, telling him what a good master he was, how happy he was making the house and promising to tell him everything he knew about the rooms.

They decided to start downstairs, in the basement. Or at least, that was what Harry had thought, but there was in fact a second basement, and a wine cellar beneath that! There was a lot of dust down there, but nothing major was broken or in disrepair, it just needed a lot of dusting. Kreacher spoke with enthusiasm about the people who contributed to the stock of liquor, about the wood the racks were made from “they is be needing a good polish, sir”, but admitted he didn’t know the contents of many of the bottle stored there. So Harry noted down to do an inventory to be done in the far, far future, because some of the bottles on the shelves were clearly some kind of potion flasks, not wine. Harry made a few more cleaning notes on Kreachers recommendation and then decided to move on to the next floor. This hadn’t been so bad, so Harry was decidedly cheerful moving up into the lower basement.

The lower basement housed, among other things, the quarters for the house elves. The quarters consisted of several small, interconnected rooms and a small bathroom. It was an odd sight, seeing all the little beds neatly made up and he privately thought it had a vague military feel to it, but kept his mouth shut since Kreacher seemed to like it. They were also by far the neatest and cleanest rooms in the whole house he had seen yet.

It did feel odd, walking around here and having Kreacher tell him about its history. Apparently at one point there had been twenty house-elves living here at once. Twenty! Harry tried to imagine why any family would need twenty house-elves but drew a blank.

There were several small rooms on this floor used for different kinds of storage, and one gigantic room that housed a heating and cooling system that seemed to be in serious disrepair. The room had Kreacher wringing his ear in shame about how he had not been able to fix it when it had broken ages ago. He only calmed down after Harry promised to order books about the subject and to (somewhat) prioritise it on the to-do list.

The upper basement was mostly food storage and what seemed to be a whole second kitchen. This floor was pretty bad, a lot of stuff broken, dirty or both. The last room they visited there was a large, empty one that was a lot cleaner than the rest of the floor. It was also the first time Kreacher did not prattle on about the history of the room, the amazing woodwork or the curtain fabric that came from Estonian weavers. From the hard looks and wringing hands Harry quickly figured out that whatever this room had housed had been taken out or destroyed by the order of the Phoenix. So he simply noted down to clean the room and repair the broken windowsill and moved upstairs.

He had thought the ground floor would be easier because he (sort of) knew most of the rooms, but it was not. For some reason it took Harry looking into and cataloguing three rooms (the kitchen, the informal dining room – yes Kreacher, those Dutch Delfts-blue tiles on the fireplace are lovely –, and the sitting room) before he noticed something lacking.

“Where is all the furniture?”

The question had Kreacher wringing his hands staring down at the floor. There was _some_ furniture in the rooms, but not more than a broken couch or a few overturned chairs. “Master Sirius was not liking mistress Walburga’s furniture very much, master Harry”.

Apparently both Sirius and some of the order members had been systematically getting rid of most of the furniture. And while Harry understood Sirius reasons (his mum really _was_ a bitch), he didn’t get why the order had destroyed or vanished the interior. Had the chairs been evil or something? Why would they have thrown out a dinner table? Harry was more than a bit annoyed at them as he frowned at what little remained, something Kreacher noticed.

“Kreacher is saving some of it, master Harry” He told him excitedly. “I has been putting some in the attic, safe from the thiefses. None of poor mistresses things survived, put master Sirius was letting me keep the other pieces Kreacher could save.”

That was a relief, so at least some of it had survived. Harry didn’t really fancy having to buy furniture for every room in this house, he was rich but not _that_ rich.

They made quick work of the rest of the ground floor. And Harry learned that there were in fact two dining rooms (which might have been why he had gotten so confused before), a formal and a informal one. When surveying the informal dining room Kreacher nearly burst into tears of happiness when Harry told him he really liked the Nordic woodwork and asked him a few questions about it – which Kreacher answered after he stopped sniffling.

Harry checked the time and decided to do one more floor today before they would have lunch and then leave for Gringots. Doing the whole house would take too long and the to-do list was already massive.

He and Kreacher nearly got into a fight over replacing the carpet (look how torn up it is, Kreacher! And besides, it’s ugly.) But he finally managed to convince the house-elf by promising to take Kreacher with him when he went to buy a new one and put it high on his monstrous priority list. In contrast it was very easy to get Kreacher to agree to removing the wallpaper; there wasn’t much of it left anyways.

They went quickly through the other rooms on the first floor; Kreacher with his ever running (and surprisingly interesting) commentary about the house, and Harry with is every growing list of things to do. The only other thing that left them quarrelling was that awful family tapestry. But this time Kreacher was the one who eventually got his way. He promised to try to get rid of the burns and decide where they would hang it later, and if he could not clear it Kreacher would keep the tapestry out of Harry’s sight and never mention it again.

After a filling lunch and some squeaking from Kreacher for Harry to put on some decent clothes (or at least clean) Harry threw on a cloak with a hood that mostly shielded his face and apparated both Kreacher and himself to Gringots.

\--

Goblins were weird. That had been what Harry had thought at eleven years old and it was what he thought now. He was also fiercely glad he had brought Kreacher with him. Harry was currently seated in a cramped office with mountains of parchment on the tiny desk in front of him that needed to be looked at. He had always know that he was rich, in a sort of; I won’t have to worry about finding a job strait out of school kind of way. But as it turned out when he had inherited the Black accounts he had gone from somewhat-rich to Absolutely-Filthy-Rich.

This was partly due to a lot of assets being absorbed back into the main Black account.  He now owned Belatrix vault, and through some legal matter he didn’t quite get also a large part of the Lestrange vault. And there were several other vaults of which he didn’t recognise the names that had been absorbd back into the main Black vault as well. He hadn’t yet come across Narcissa Malfoy, but Harry wasn’t even half-way through his mountains of paperwork, so that might still come since she was a Black as well by birth.

The Potter vault had grown as well. Now the war was over there were apparently more than a few people who wanted to show their gratitude to him by donating money. He had no idea why, but it seemed to be a thing people did. He also found out that a few people had made him beneficiary in their wills, either because he was the Boy-Who-Lived or because they wanted to aid the war effort after they passed. Harry shed more than a few tears while reading through those documents, and vowed to donate every last knut to the rebuilding efforts still going on or other charities.

Finally, after almost four hours of reading documents and asking Kreacher questions about the archaic language most of them were written in (Kreacher had simply apparated out and then came back with a dictionary), he had found the part of the Black vaults that dealt with the household fund. Luckily he could understand most of it, so editing it and making certain Kreacher had access to all the galleons he could need was only half an hour’s work.

With that, Kreacher left to the stores, leaving Harry buried under his mountains of paperwork. Harry had really wanted to come along, if only to see where these things were bought, but this needed to be done. At least he was now free to swear at the offending documents without Kreacher’s disapproving looks and “Master Harry is to be reading, not disgracing the Ancient and Noble House of Black with his language.” comments. His hand was cramping from all the writing - he had tried to do it as neatly as possible, but doubted anyone would notice the effort. It had been more than a little weird to sign his name as ‘Lord Potter-Black’.

When he returned to the house it was clear that Kreacher had been busy. The entrance and foyer had been cleaned and stripped of the ugly carpet and most of the wallpaper. The only eye-sore left was the Portrait. Harry eyed the sleeping woman curiously for a moment, but then decided he was too tired to deal with it today and walked towards the kitchen.

Which he was promptly thrown out of.

Kreacher had also cleaned the informal dining room and insisted Harry eat there. “Master Harry is eating like a proper wizard!” It was quite a nice room even if it was rather bare now. The floor and walls had been stripped and a large, heavy wooden table stood directly on the stone floor. Hmm, he really should start thinking about decoration; this whole cleaning business was going a lot faster than he had thought. But Harry had no idea where to start. What to do first? Was it better to use paint or wallpaper?

He asked Kreacher about it when he came to get the dishes, who frowned at the question. “I is be getting master books.” and quickly popped away only to return with a stack of books almost as high as himself. “Master Harry is to be resting now.” The elf declared shoving the books at Harry. When Harry opened his mouth to say he would clean some more first he was glared in submission. “Master is to be resting. Only resting and reading.” And Harry couldn’t do much more than nod his consent.

So while Kreacher was cleaning up a storm downstairs Harry settled into bed with his stack of books and opened the first one. He didn’t notice he had fallen asleep until he opened his eyes the next morning.

\--

After breakfast the next morning they continued their survey of the house and consequently Harry’s education in all things Ancient and Black. There were a lot more bedrooms than Harry had known, and Harry almost cried when he saw the state the library was in (he might have hung out with Hermione to much). It wasn’t just the dirt and disrepair, but at least a tenth of the books were gone And since the Black Library was pretty big, a tenth was easily over a thousand books. Harry wasn’t sure why he cared so much, those books must have been dangerous if Sirius and the order had removed them, but still… As he brushed his hand over one of the empty shelves he couldn’t help the burst of anger at those who had taken what was his.

Kreacher was looking dejected as well “I has only managed to save some of the books master Harry.” The house-elf was wringing his hands and looking more and more distressed by his inability to appease Harry. Harry tried to reassure him it wasn’t his fault, but was not sure of how to do this. The uninspired and vaguely condescending sounding; “It’s not your fault Kreacher, you tried your best.” just got him a weak glare in return.

\--

Other than the library there were no real surprises until after lunch, when Kreacher told him all that was left to do inside the house was the attic.

Harry hadn’t really known what he had expected of the attic, but it wasn’t this. It was _huge_. Harry had no idea how this fit inside this house (magic probably), but he had seen football fields smaller than this. The room was crammed with so much stuff Harry had no idea where to look first. A tentative Kreacher was explaining how it had been used for storage for a long time, and how Kreacher himself had expanded on that when ‘bad masters and mistresses’ had told him to throw things away.

There was furniture; wardrobes, vanities, sofa’s, tables and a lot more. But it wasn’t just furniture; there was clothing, books, lampshades, mirrors, something that looked like a weaponry cabinet, mountains of chests and boxes with gods know what inside. But amidst it all, Harry’s eye was immediately drawn to the right of the room, where rows of portraits where quietly chatting amongst themselves.

Walking closer Harry could see it wasn’t just portraits. There were paintings of a variety of things, landscapes and animals easily outnumbered the paintings made of humans. There were also more than a few old-looking tapestries in the mix. A large tapestry of a sleeping snake lay at an awkward angle over two wardrobes.

Now coming to a stop in front of the curious portraits Harry could see there were around 15 oil-paintings and 4 people embroidered onto tapestries, all of whom were looking at him curiously.

Harry cleared his throat awkwardly, “Uhm, hello.”

Luckily Kreacher came to the rescue before he could make a fool out of himself (in front of paintings of all things) and introduced him as the new ‘Lord Potter-Black’. Two of the portraits, both with black hair and long noses, immediately denounced him for not being ‘a real black’ and began a long and loud conversation with each other about how far the house of Black had fallen. Harry was surprised enough to be silent for a few moments, but soon found irritation and anger rising up inside him. Who where they to judge him?

“Yes yes. The house of Black is in ruins after following Voldemort for years. And now you have me as head. A Potter and a half-blood, isn’t that nice?”  So he might have been a little snide, their bulging eyes and outraged looks before they started up their complaining again were worth it.

“Do not listen to them. To hear them tell it they were the epitome of Black, phah, Perseus married his sister and Eridanus wouldn’t know his wand from his rear. Besides, it is good to meet a Potter again.” The voice came from his right and cut right through the arguing men.

Harry turned to see the portrait of a stern looking woman sitting regally on an ornate wooden chair. He could tell the wood used as frame was relatively new (Kreachers stories about the house were clearly good for something) and the woman looked vaguely familiar. “Nice to meet you ma'am, I am Harry Potter.”

The woman in the portrait looked delighted and a lot less stern for a moment, “Harry you say. What a lovely name. It is a bit odd meeting you like this, but I believe that with that hair and cheekbones, plus those lovely green eyes you cannot be anyone else but a son of my James and Lily. It is nice to meet you child, I am Dorea Black-Potter.”

His Grandmother! For a moment Harry was quite at los what to say. “It is so nice to meet you. I didn’t- I didn’t know...”

The woman- his grandmother, smiled softly at him. “It is alright. Even up here we have heard a bit about some of… well, it is good to meet you at last.  I am just a portrait, but it is good to meet my grandson, even after death.” she said not unkindly.

Harry smiled at her at watery eyes. It took a while before he could speak to her normally, but once he started, speaking with his grandmothers portrait became easy. Only occasionally difficult to hear; with the screeching from Perseus and Eridanus.

Surprisingly, Perseus and Eridanus were the only portraits or tapestries that really had a problem with him. When his grandmother introduced him to the other paintings they were delighted to make his acquaintance. Ophiuchus and his wife Arae, who were both lovely and fascinated by current affairs, though it was clear that English was not their first language -  at least not modern English. The same was true for most of the paintings surprisingly. Auriga was bewildered when Dorea introduced Harry to her and he called her tapestry ‘cool’. Most of the portraits had ridiculous names (honestly! Who would name their child Camelopardalis?) but Harry managed to keep a straight face, and found he quite liked most of the old names.

It was Harry’s turn to be surprised when he found out that Cepheus and Caelum where husbands, and Carinae and Mirach were married to each other as well. He stuttered awkwardly for a moment and eventually trailed off and mumbled something about being raised by muggles. That prompted a round of surprised looks, and tentative questions about how that came to be. It also prompted the portrait of Sigatta to inquire how those ‘cute’ muggles were doing nowadays, she had heard they had managed to make light without magic or fire!

In the end Harry stayed chatting to the portraits for several hours. Kreacher had long since gone back to cleaning and was well on his way to making the ground floor liveable when Harry managed to extract himself from the portraits with promises to hang them around the house when the renovations were done. (And he had gotten a few tips on how to get rid of Walburga!)

\--

Cleaning was harder work than it looked, especially when you didn’t know what you were doing. Harry had started on the library while Kreacher was tackling the master bedroom. Harry soon found creative new uses for some spells he had known for a while, and made liberal use of the vanishing charm. It seemed however that his spells needed more and more power behind them to have effect. It was as if something absorbing part of the spell, leaving it rather weak in the face of magical fungus. But while Harry had never been as clever as Hermione or as tactically inclined as Ron, he did have magical power. And, frowning at the brown stain on the wall that just would not leave, he refused to be defeated by some in-house fungus. This led to Harry firing over-powered spells in rapid succession for hours. When Kreacher finally came to check up on him he was drenched in sweat and out of breath, nursing his painful shoulder. Kreacher was furious at him and squeaked angrily that he had to take a break as Harry swayed on his feet.

Even exhausted Harry tried to insist on continuing the cleaning but eventually allowed himself to be pushed into the newly cleaned sitting room with a cup of tea and his stack of books so Kreacher could “be cleanings in peace while master Harry _not_ dying of exhaustion”.

So Harry settled in the couch to catch his breath for a bit and opened the book he had been reading yesterday, hoping to find something useful. The books were insanely difficult. Harry had hoped it had been exhaustion yesterday that made the books so bloody difficult, but no such luck. It wasn’t like the Gringots papers either, where using a dictionary would clear things up. No, it wasn’t the archaic language that was the problem here. The books reminded Harry of that time in his second year at Hogwarts when he accidently confused a sixth years book on magical theory with his own. He understood all the words in the sentences but he was missing six years of knowledge and just did not understand what it _meant_.

He did however find something about how to change the colour and texture of the walls. It was a really strange text and seemed to be less of a spell and more… magic that persuaded the house to change shape? The book was really vague and spoke at length about old ‘wild-inclined’ houses, whatever that was.

By the time dinner came around Harry’s confidence had taken a wild rollercoaster ride; alternating between thinking he might actually understand how to change the colour of the walls to reading something that implied furniture could have personalities and preferences (apparently 11th century Japanese pieces had a notorious and longstanding feud with 9th century Chinese pieces) and that rooms could be persuaded by the master of the house to appear, disappear or move somewhere else in the house. Harry was just riding a confidence low reading about how choosing spun fibers over woven cloth could bring about the destruction of mankind (or at least shame the person who chose the cloth into hermitage) when Kreacher announced dinner was ready.

During dinner Kreacher update Harry on the progress he had made and showed him the things he had crossed of on the monstrous to-do list. After that Kreacher suggested a walk over the grounds, ostentatiously so Harry could see if any repairs were necessary but mostly so Kreacher had an excuse to tell him about the history. “We is having enough time to see the stables and greenhouses before it gets dark if we be leaving soon.”

Harry nearly choked on his tea. ”You mean there is more than just the garden? But we’re in the middle of London!”

Kreacher gave him a reproachful look. “The house is being old master Harry, London is being new.”

Right. So a walk around the grounds it was.

After finishing dinner Harry put on a cloak Kreacher handed him and followed the house-elf outside.

\---

Harry now understood why Kreacher had called it ‘the grounds’ and not ‘the gardens’. There was a whole bloody forest in the middle of London! Kreacher told him a bit about what he knew of the magic involved in hiding this from the muggles, but it mostly just boiled down to ‘magic’.

Close to the house there were the gardens Harry had known of. But a bit further down to the left were the greenhouses, and even further back were the stables and carriage house. Behind that the forest began.

Harry thought most of the gardens were fine. Perhaps needed a bit of weeding, but he quite liked the overgrown look. Perfectly neat and stylised flowers were not his thing, it reminded him too much of his aunt’s garden. The greenhouses would need a bit more work if he ever planned on actually using them, but he never had much talent for herbology so it was put low on the priority list. The carriage house was mostly fine (and had actual carriages in them! Kreacher told him wizards now days still used them when attending formal events, which was pretty weird) but the stables were in a terrible state. Kreacher told him about a whole manner of creatures that had been housed here once, and enthusiastically talked about repairing it (Abraxan, Aethonan and Granians were only the tip of the iceberg). But Harry felt a bit weird standing there. Why would he have stable without anything in it? It felt odd. Harry looked at the broken roof. Yes, it felt weird but the thought of breaking it down felt wrong as well.

He tentatively told Kreacher about his double feeling, and surprisingly enough the elf sympathised. “Perhaps Master Harry can be putting something into the stable then. Just a small animal maybe, there is space for birdses, there is the warm space master Octantis kept his reptiles in and old mistress Cassiopeia had hunting dogs in here.”

“Hmm, yes. Maybe some small animal will help, though I really don’t know- Oh! Buckbeak! I should look into where he is hanging out these days. Maybe he’ll want to stay for a bit.” Harry grinned at Kreachers scowl, the house-elf hadn’t liked the hippogriff much. Ah, so perhaps not. Harry knew Kreacher was already overworking himself. He was old and the house was much work, adding helping Harry take care of a creature he hated would perhaps be too much.

“Maybe later. The stables are not really a priority, and you’re right Kreacher, I may be better off starting with something small. Besides, Buckbeak is more than capable of taking care of himself.”

The look of relief on Kreachers face was quite comical.

On another part of the grounds the house-elf showed him some of the wild-herb beds and told him some more about how various masters build and destroyed buildings on the grounds (apparently there had been a bathhouse, and the man who had torn in down had been exiled from the family).

Eventually they reached the foot of forest, and Harry felt more than a bit intimidated by the tall trees. It was getting rather late, but since Kreacher had led him here there had to be more to be seen.

“The last place is being a bit far master Harry, but I is able to apparate master Harry there.”

Harry agreed and took Kreachers hand. There was a loud pop and the familiar squeezing feeling and Harry was suddenly standing in the middle of the forest. Kreacher had apparated them into a little clearing with a wooden structure to the side. As the house-elf led him close Harry could see it was clearly the oldest thing he had seen today. It was… odd, and reminded him a little of those little asian shrine like things he had seen in pictures.

“This is being…” Kreacher looked a little unsure. “This is being a place of worship. Many master and mistresses have come here to pray or do magic, Kreacher does not know all the details, it is being private. ” He gave Harry an odd look. “Masters and Mistresses may be doing whatever they like here, but most masters is giving something.” Kreacher waved vaguely towards the shrine-thing. “Master Harry may be coming here whenever he wants. It is good for Master Harry and the house if he is coming here. But there may be no taking and destroying of things. Master Harry may do with the grounds and the house whatever he wants, but this not.”

There was an odd fierceness about Kreacher as he talked, and Harry had no problem agreeing to not destroying this place. It had a nice feel to it anyway. As he walked around he could see something that was probably some sort of old rune-circle, and there were some spots on the little shrine and the oddly carved stones around it where he could tell blood had been spilled, butt… this place didn’t feel dark or evil. Harry knew how dark magic felt, he knew better than most people. And this didn’t feel like that, it just felt old. Safe. Like looking out the window on a dark stormy night when you’re tucked into bed with hot tea.

It was relaxing, and he took more time looking around the place than was absolutely necessary (and from Kreachers triumphant look he knew it too).

When it got too dark to see properly Harry asked Kreacher to apparate them back inside. He wanted to get some more cleaning and reading done before going to bed.

\--

What followed were several days of working up a sweat cleaning, getting yelled at by Kreacher because he dared to exhaust himself and subsequently being pushed into the shower or a chair to sit down to read the never ending piles of confusing books. In return Harry persuaded Kreacher to take breaks as well, mostly by acting as a willing target for his tales of the Ancient and Noble house of Black. He even managed to persuade Kreacher to tell him what he knew about the Potters, though it wasn’t much.

When he wanted to know about the Potters in more detail he went up to the attic to visit the portrait of his grandmother. She was not as great a storyteller as Kreacher, but managed fine. The other portraits had their own tales as well. Auriga told him many tales about the old covens and funny ritual mishaps. Ophiuchus and Arae had been teachers, and spoke at length about magical theory and how it had changed over the years (this was surprisingly interesting, even though Harry had never been one much for academics before).  They often got into debates halfway through a story or explanation with Sigatta, who had a different view and told Harry that those modern science explanations were rubbish, and insisted that her tales of folklore, myths and children’s stories were all a wizard needed. (Her tales were Harry’s favourite by far.)

Harry had never been the studious type, especially not with books he could barely understand, so after a day of hard work cleaning and repairing things he could only stand to read Kreachers books for a few hours before he went upstairs to listen to more stories from the portraits.

Camelopardalis had the most amazing tales about old scholars, alchemists and philosophers, and knew so much about astronomy it was freighting. When Harry asked if he had started the trend of naming Blacks for stars, he snorted derisively and gave Harry a sharp look. “Blacks are not named after stars, stars are named after Blacks.” And that was that.

While talking to the portraits (and casting silencing charms on those two idiots who did nothing but insult him) Harry tried to sort through some of the things stored in the attic. It was hellish work since there was no system whatsoever, but it did give Harry some idea of what kind of things were up here. He now knew that when it came to furnishing the house later he would have choice between at least 30 couches of several sizes, but only a few armchairs. There were also a lot of pieces of furniture of which Harry had no idea what they were or how to use them. Luckily the portraits were helpful in explaining these things.

Harry liked listening to them, especially the portrait of his grandmother (he was biased because of the family connection, sue him) and enjoyed listening to the variety of topics they discussed. Surprisingly Cepheus and Caelum had wildly different areas of interest to talk about. Cepheus told him about moving forests, talking trees and spirit lights, while Caelum was clearly a scholar and spoke about runes, languages and rituals.

Ruchbah spoke first about fields of war and battle in a grand and rather blood-thirsty way, but got quieter after Harry added in his own opinion and experiences. Then the portrait hesitantly started talking about conflicts in a much different way, the diplomacy, and the reason behind the actions. It was rarely as clear-cut ‘good-versus-evil’ as Harry’s fight had been and there was usually a lot more politics in Ruchbah’s tales, but his perspective on things was interesting none the less.

Time passed quickly, and Harry was quite happy with the little world he was creating, and from the happy humming from the house it agreed. It was truly relaxing to be out of the public eye and not have to talk to other people. He still sent letters to Ron and Hermione of course, but they and Gringots were the only contact he had with humans; it felt liberating. Between magically exhausting himself cleaning, listening to stories, the epic battle to remove Ms. Black’s portrait from the hall and the books Kreacher kept pushing at him Harry blinked and suddenly found several weeks had passed.

\--

Thursday morning started with Harry having tea and toast in the newly clean breakfast room as he reviewed their to-do list. Rather a lot had been crossed off already, which was great, but also worried Harry slightly. Kreacher was really working too hard, the house-elf was fairly old, and Harry didn’t want to him to strain himself.

He had decided to start today with the redecoration. The first three floors had been completely striped back, fixed and cleaned, so it was time to start putting some colour back on the walls. He had been putting it off slightly because he had been afraid of messing up and damaging the house, and because he was a little afraid of choosing the wrong colours or textures. Kreacher had made sure he knew what happened to people who didn’t respect the house. Ah well. He would just try and create something he liked himself. If it was horrible or unsuitable surely Kreacher would tell him.

Book in his pocket and wand in hand Harry felt as ready as he’d ever be. He started with the walls in the hallway, he had already decided to make all the hallways white; so that would be easy, right?

Wrong.

After hesitantly pushing his magic into the walls the way the book had suggested, they turned a bright-white colour that made Harry think of hospitals. He adjusted, gathered his magic again and pushed it into the wall. Now it was almost brown!

Before he knew it, Harry had spend half an hour on finding just the right colour of white, with just the right texture. When he finally got a good result he grinned. It looked so good! Now he turned his attention to the floor. What to do with that.

As turned out; he could do _a lot_ with that. After some time of having fun experimenting Harry decided on a dark polish and perhaps adding a runner later. After that he really got into it. It was so much fun! The rooms weren’t done yet, Harry had started a whole list of things he needed to add to each room, but just adding wallpaper or paint to a room made it look and feel so much better.

The house seemed to appreciate it as well. In crooned and sighed and let in as much light as it could (which reminded Harry to add curtains to the list) and gave off happy little waves. The fact the house reacted so positively also made Harry bold enough to try and persuade it to change its layout slightly. He didn’t really understand why the library was so high up, and why the rooms to receive guests in had no direct connection to the guest-floo.

The house was happy to oblige. Bringing the library to the second floor and giving the floos, antechamber, sitting room, lunchroom and formal receiving rooms a much more logical layout. For some reason it also enlarge the ballroom and added windows. Harry had no idea why, but was on the lookout for other things that had changed but he hadn’t noticed yet.

Quite happy with the changes Harry went on with his redecorating, giving the breakfast room a nice blue for the walls and got a little more daring with the dining room, spending ages coaxing on the silver outline of a tree on the white wall and ceiling. He just finished inspecting it and admiring the way it was only visible when the light caught it when Kreacher came to inform him lunch was ready.

During lunch Harry showed Kreacher the list of stuff he wanted to put into the rooms and asked him if he would be able to buy the things Harry couldn’t find in the attic.

That didn’t get the response he expected.

“Master Harry is to not be lazy, and be choosing his own furniture. How is you deciding to buy it or not when you is not there to see it? Master Harry will not shame the house!”

“But I don’t know the first thing about those things! I don’t even know _where_ to buy a lampshade or couch, let alone how to judge quality!”

“Master Harry has the books Kreacher gave him. He is to be acting like a proper master and reading them.”

“I am reading those books, but it’s hard! And besides, reading about it is very different. You know what, I’ll just see what is in the attic first. I might not have to buy anything. If I have to buy things anyway I’ll deal with it when it comes.”

Kreacher looked somewhat appeased and tentatively offered; “Master Harry is doing that. If... if Master Harry is still unsure when having to buy new things, Kreacher will come with him.” Here he mildly glared at Harry again. “But only if Master Harry is doing the choosing! Kreacher is only there to help.”

Harry smiled gratefully. “Thank you Kreacher, that would be wonderful.”

“Now Master Harry is to be eating. If Master Harry is going to be choosing thingses from the attic today Kreacher will give master a book-“

“Another book?!”

Kreacher shot him a glare and turned walk away.

“Kreacher knows the house approves of the decorating Master Harry did so far, and it is be looking good. But Master Harry does not know how to deal with furniture, they is not being in rooms like this for a long time, so they is needing some adjusting. Master will read the book to learn what to do when they is rebelling or arguing with each others.”

\--

Harry had meant to go up to the attic sometime before dinner, but was still changing the colour of the marble floor in the ballroom when Kreacher informed him it was time for dinner. Harry blinked and looked back at the walls where he had just spend ages creating the Black and Potter crests in the appropriate colours.

“Right. Uhmm. I guess I got a bit caught up or something. I didn’t mean to…”

“Master Harry is doing excellent work.” Kreacher beamed up at him. “It is being different from Mistress Walburga’s tastes but… the house and I is liking it.” Kreacher’s smile turned vaguely guilty at the unintended stab at his former mistress.  “It is looking a bit like some of the stories I has heard of one of the first mistresses.”

That turned into another history lesson as Harry settled in for dinner. He ate his food while listening to Kreacher talk about Mistress Tonatiuh who was a ritualist and rune master who was responsible for many of the enchantments that kept the property and forest safe. (Also, apparently Camelopardalis was named after her, though Harry didn’t really understand how that worked.) When Harry finished eating he complimented Kreacher on his cooking and managed (with a bit of needling) to extract a promise from Kreacher to go easy on the cleaning tonight. Harry shook his head as he finally made his way up to the attic, Kreacher was working way too hard for a house-elf of his age, he needed all the breaks he could get.

The first thing Harry did when closing the attic door behind him was greeting the portraits; first his grandmother, then the others. They were all overjoyed (as much as a bunch of people who clearly had trouble showing emotions could be ‘overjoyed’) when Harry informed them that tomorrow he would hang them downstairs if they wanted. They weren’t at all daunted by his proclamations of how it still wasn’t finished, that the house was just _clean_ not furnished or decorated. Clearly none of them cared, even the snake was hissing excitedly on his tapestry.

He spent most of his evening sorting through furniture and trying to find the ones he wanted to use in the newly painted rooms. Finding pieces that he both liked and fit the rooms was a lot harder than he had thought. His best find of the evening were blue-grey drapes that had protection runes woven into them, he almost _flew_ downstairs in his excitement to put them up. And of course, when he was down he got distracted by rooms that were not done yet, so Harry subsequently spent the rest of the evening and a good portion of the night pouring his magic into the walls in his quest of finding the right shades and textures. He only eventually stopped because of a very angry Kreacher who had a lot to say about what happened to naughty Masters who didn’t go to sleep on time.

But even as he lay in bed in his new bedroom Harry could not resist lazily shooting magic at the ceiling, trying all sorts of colours and designs. He eventually put his wand away when he accidentally managed to make it look like some far-away galaxy; a dark background, glistening stars and drifting red mist.

\--

Harry spent most of the next morning changing colours and textures of walls, ceilings and floors. Kreacher had done amazing work with the cleaning, and his own efforts weren’t too shabby as well. Most of the house was clean and in working order. Which Harry was glad for, because Kreacher was starting to look awfully grey, not always wanting to admit that he needed a break when he was clearly tired.

In the afternoon Harry brought down the portraits from the attic, to show them the house and let them choose where they wanted to be hung. Most of the portraits preferred to be hung in the hallways, but several had a favourite room in the house or liked how Harry had decorated some of them, and chose them as their permanent spots. The large tapestry of the snake he hung in the hall. The creature wasn’t very chatty, but decent enough company for a snake (and, Harry found out, turned out to be at least a millennium old!). Harry and the snake got on pretty well even if it wasn’t nearly as chatty as some of the other portraits and tapestries. It was fiercely protective of the Ancient and Noble house of Black, and subsequently its current Lord. The snake felt that he, as the one that hung closest to the door leading outside, was the first defence should any trouble come knocking. Harry did nothing to dissuade him of the notion.

When Harry started picking out furniture to actually put into the rooms he became fiercely glad for the book that Kreacher had given him on how to deal with bad-tempered possessions. He found a lovely commode that just wouldn’t stop trying to eat a nearby cabinet and a sofa that kept picking fights with all the bookcases. But despite all that Harry thought the hunt for stuff to fill his house with was going reasonably well.

A lot of things in the attic were not to Harry’s tastes; most of it was much to kitsch. He found it surprising that the pieces that he _did_ like were usually the _really_ old stuff, and he had resigned himself to some sort of hippie-chic look for the house when he found himself completely enchanted by a set of heavy wooden dining table and chairs with intricate runic design. Harry was very surprised by his own tastes and eventually just decided to go with the flow, apparently he liked his house full of weird runic stuff.

So when Harrys attention was caught by what seemed to be a painting of a flying whale it was love on first sight. He didn’t hesitate to dig through the pile to search if there were more lovely weird paintings (he had discovered similar things flocked together in this room), and couldn’t believe is luck when he found a whole stack shoved behind a large cabinet.

They were painted on an odd material; almost like leather, but not from any animal Harry knew. There was a humanoid volcano glowing red in anger, odd magical creatures, several nature scenes, a man with no face pitch black skin and 6 arms, and much more.

 His favourite by far was the biggest of them all; a wide painting in warm colours of a woman with an owl-head, lounging on cushions wearing elaborate robes. She didn’t speak, but seemed to listen when Harry spoke to her. So he talked to her a bit before deciding she would go well in the newly created reading nook in the library. (Yes he had a study, but he liked to stretch out when reading for fun and just felt weird doing that in his office; so now the library had a corner with a comfy sofa and lots of pillows.)

A smaller painting of a woman with a crows head went into the study, the man with no face seemed to like the anteroom and humanoid volcano chose a spot in one of the upstairs sitting rooms. There were three paintings of trees of which at least one had a face, so Harry hung those in the conservatory and made sure they could look into the garden.

As Harry lay in bed that night, he fell asleep as orange and green mist swirled around each other and far-off planets rotated on his ceiling. He dreamt of the man with no face and six arms humming ‘Mary had a little lamb’ while changing his skin from black to red with purple stripes as he watched Harry carve glowing pink runes into stones.

\--

Now the hardest work was done both Harry and Kreacher took a bit of a breather. Oh, Harry still lost himself in the redecorating and searching through the attic, but it wasn’t quite the mad dash that it was before. Harry took enough breaks to wander through the house looking for secret hiding spots, or spend time reading in the library (I can read books about quidditch for fun Kreacher! Not all books need to be informative.), and chatting to the portraits.

Harry took delight in exploring the grounds outside and lately had taken to wandering through the woods, trying to guess names of the trees or to just simply enjoy the serene atmosphere.

It was during his explorations of the forest that he came upon the little shrine again. The walk to the clearing could take him somewhere between 30 minutes and two hours depending on how lost he got. He _could_ , of course, just apparate but it somehow felt like cheating. Besides, the walk there was pleasant and he liked exploring the trees, boulders and brooks he encounters on his property; it was still a weird thought that all of this is in London.

Harry approached the clearing a little hesitantly, but eventually let curiosity get the better of him and went to inspect the little wooden house. It reminded harry a little of a doll-house; it stood on wooden poles about thirty centimetres off the ground with a sloping roof, a large open door and little windows in the sides. Inside was one chamber of perhaps one meter wide with a few saucers and rust or bloodstains on the floor.

Moss had settled on the roof of the thing and several little bowls had been toppled over. So Harry set them strait and let his fingers brush over the wood as he sat in front of the structure. It felt odd, and when he put his face close to the dark wood he could see all sorts of little symbols were carved in it. He had never studied the subject but these were clearly some form of ancient runes, even if he didn’t recognise them from the papers Hermione had sometimes waved at him.

When Harry had set everything strait and satisfied his curiosity he wandered over to the ritual circle on the other side of the clearing.

He then spend a lot of time sitting in the dirt trying to see if he could understand some of what was etched into the stones. Right, he was definitely going to look that up in the library later, or owl Flourish and Blotts for their catalogue and see if they had anything on it. He had wanted to order that new quidditch book anyway, a book on runes would have to be ordered as well.

When it started to get dark harry stood back up to walk back to the house. He made a mental note to come back here soon, it was a good place to sit and think.

\--

Despite taking it down a notch Kreacher was still looking more than a little stressed. Eventually the stress Kreachers denied he experienced came to an conclusion when Kreacher saw Harry make his own lunch one day and burst into tears. Between the sobbing and wailing Kreacher finaly admitted he was trying to do too much work for one aging house-elf.

“The grounds is being so _big_ , and I is only a old kitchen-elf and- and-“ He broke off sobbing. “It is being shameful, so shameful! Master was fixing the stables and then came inside to clean dust, dust!, off the salon mantelpiece. Oh I is so ashamed. I should have, should have-“

Eventually Harry managed to calm him down a bit.

“Okay, listen Kreacher.” Said Harry thoughtfully. “You like working in the kitchen best right?”

That got him a head flopping up and down while big watery eyes looking beseechingly up at him.

“The grounds outside can wait for now, I don’t want you to worry about _anything_ that is outside. Nor should you worry too much about cleaning.”

Kreacher was already opening his mouth to complain about that but Harry just steamrolled on.

“If you have extra time when you are done with your work in the kitchen, it is okay to clean. But don’t stress about it, I don’t mind a bit of dust or cleaning it myself.”

Kreacher was tugging his ears in distress now, clearly not liking the new plan.

“ It’s okay. It will be fine. We’ll try this for a while, and see how it goes, okay?”

It took a while more to convince Kreacher that he wasn’t a ‘taint on the Ancient an Noble house of Black’ and that it was natural to not be able to do as much work as he had been able to when he was younger. Luckily Kreacher eventually agreed to focus on his beloved kitchen and to try and not worry too much about anything else.

\--

Reading was quickly becoming Harry’s new favourite past-times and he spent many evenings lounging on the pillows in front of the owl woman. He was reading a book on magical creatures one evening when his attention was caught by the chapter on vampires. It was a definition at the beginning of a chapter, and Harry couldn’t help but pause and stare. The book gave definition of several pertinent words at the beginning of each chapter, and this time one of those words was ‘undead’. There seemed to be a difference between ‘Incorporeal spirits’ and ‘living corpses’, but in general it was defined as;

_The undead are beings that are deceased but behave as if they were alive. A common example of an undead being is a corpse reanimated by magical forces (inferi), by the application of either the deceased's own life force or that of another being._

And odd feeling came over him reading that. And he wondered if… Harry quickly stood up to find a book that could give him the definition of another word that was bouncing around his mind. He found it in a book on religions off all things.

_Resurrection; from the Latin noun resurrectio -onis, from the verb rego, "to make straight, rule" + preposition sub, "under", altered to subrigo and contracted to surgo, surrexi, surrectum + preposition re-, "again", thus literally "a straightening from under again". The concept of coming back to life after death. In a number of ancient religions, a dying-and-rising god is a deity which dies and resurrects._

Which led him to the Lazarus syndrome ( _also known as autoresuscitation after failed cardiopulmonary resuscitation, is the spontaneous return of circulation after failed attempts at resuscitation.)_ and Suspended Animation ( _the inducement of a momentary cessation or decay of main body functions, including the brain, to a hypometabolic state in order to try to preserve its mental and physiological capabilities._ ). His heart was tapping a sharp and fast rhythm in his chest as the books around him piled higher and higher.

Somehow Harry ended up reading in a book called _Anabiosis_ which talked about near-dead experiences when it all became too much. He snapped the book shut and fled into the woods to think.

It seemed like he had only took one step into the forest before he looked up and found himself standing next to the altar. Harry gave a huge sigh, expelling as much air out of his lungs as he could, and set himself down in the clearing. As soon as he sat down between the ritual circle and shrine he felt a lot better. Not great, but not as panicked as before.

Harry ran his fingers through the grass and tried to think rationally as the forest around him soothed him with its feel and noises. He had tried to… forget some things that happened while fighting Voldemort, and dying was one of them. But you couldn’t ignore something like that forever. So Harry sat in the clearing, stacking stones and wondering about dead things.

\--

Harry had arranged to meet Ron for a drink on Friday, but was having serious second thoughts. It was going to be a public venue and Harry had no desire to be mobbed the way he had been before he moved into Grimmauld Place when he went out in public. The pub they were meeting in was small, little used and had private boots, but still. Harry felt… uncomfortable leaving the house.

He laughed silently at himself. Had he really become that much of a hermit?

Right. Better get going then. Before he _actually_ turned into a hermit.

A swift appartation and a brisk walk took him to the right pub without bumping into anyone on the way. When Harry entered he found Ron promptly, as he was one of only 4 people currently in the bar.

“Mate! It’s so good to see you! “

Ron greeted him with a quick hug and pat on the back as he grinned at Harry from ear to ear.

“You’re looking well mate. I gotta say that I wasn’t sure about you living in that place you know, but the results are undeniable. I think you might have actually had a meal or two!”

Harry grinned back at him. “Thanks mate. You are looking good as well, though a little signed at the edges, what did they have you do? Battle blast-ended skrewts?”

“Ha! Don’t even joke about it mate, they actually might.”

Ron signalled something to the barman and pulled Harry into the booth he had chosen as he started to regale him with tales of horrible drills, insane instructors and how he was able to fast-track some stuff because he already had a lot of fighting experience.

“Mind you, a lot of people are fast-tracking those things, most of the new recruits have fought battles before.”

Ron was just starting the tale of how they had him up at insane hours of the night to test his endurance when Harry saw their drinks were ready. As he walked over to fetch the drinks he was a lot more relaxed than when he had come in, and didn’t bother putting on his cloak. The few drunks in here clearly didn’t care who he was, which made him smile a little.

“Here, let me take that for you.” Said Harry to the barman.

“Thank you mister Potter.” The barman, a thin man with large whiskers and a solemn face, waved at the drinks and gave a little shrug. “I mean both for getting the drinks and for fighting.” He gave Harry a piercing look. “You probably have heard this a million times already, but still; thank you mister Potter.”

“Potter-Black” Harry corrected absentmindedly. “And you’re welcome I suppose, though I was not the only one that fought.” He gave the barman a little smile.

The barman got an odd, unreadable look for a moment and then relaxed a bit. “Yes indeed.” He made a peculiar little gesture with his hands. “Enjoy the drinks Lord Potter-Black.”

Harry nodded and walked back to Ron with the drinks. Who immediately continued his tale of how exhausting auror training was. Harry asked if meal-cuts were part of the training too, because missing a meal was the only thing that he could imagine bringing Ron down. That got him a lot of spluttering.

“So how have you been doing mate? How’s the renovation going? Kreacher driving you barmy yet?”

So Harry told Ron all about Grimmauld place and how he had battled fungus and found his grandmothers portrait. The cleaning was hard, but satisfying. And he was immensely enjoying himself with redecorating.

Ron frowned. “You’re taking it easy though, right. The scars are doing okay? I know the healers said to let it heal naturally for a while before they could do anything further, but exhausting yourself like that might not be great for it.”

“You mean like you have been exhausting yourself? “ Harry raised his eyebrow at Ron, who turned pink and took a big gulp from his drink.

“It has been fine.” Harry shrugged. “My shoulder still twinges a bit, and my hip and foot occasionally throw me a bit off-balance when I turn the wrong way, but nothing unexpected. You?”

“Yeah, it’s been fine. And I got weekly healer check-ups anyway. “ He gave Harry a grin. “Besides, I got Hermione to check me over.”

“Ah Ron! I don’t want to know _that_!” Harry played up his disgust at their inferred intimacy and hid his smile behind his glass as Ron gave a full-belly laugh.

Ron made a few more jokes and then turned to conversation back to his training.

“You know how I said that soon we’ll be choosing specialisations?”

“Right.”

“Yeah, so” Ron looked down a little. “so, I decided not to go into Patrol or the General Office like I planned.” He looked at Harry through a curtain of hair. “Catching criminals was what I joined for originally, but y’know, it gets  a bit much sometimes. I don’t think that is something I would want to do for the rest of my life. I’d get tired of it, I think.”

“Yes, I know.” Harry smiled.

And they exchanged knowing grins for a moment.

“So have you decided what you are going to specialise in instead?” Harry asked.

Ron’s grin was back full-force. “Yeah! I’m going into Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.”

Harry blinked in confusion.

“You know how there is a lot of illegal crossbreeding and experimental stuff going on? Well, apparently there is a special auror branch that helps the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures’s Beast division to deal with removing and taking care of the animals. Y’know, making sure everyone is safe, the animal can’t do any harm and find them a new place to stay and stuff. Strangely enough it isn’t a very popular branch, so they’re glad to have me.”

“How strange, who wouldn’t want to find out where the weak-spot on something crossbred a manticore is through trial and error.” Harry said sarcastically.

Ron smiled broadly. “Exactly. There are all sorts of specialised spells, and it’s a lot of variations and planning involved, but also quick thinking since a lot of the animals don’t react in the same way to magic as normal beasts. Experimental breeding violations department wasn’t an area that I was interested in initially, but I’ve done a lot of reading on it and it sounds great.”

“It sounds like it suits you perfectly.” Harry said. “You were always good at Care back at Hogwarts.”

The conversation rolled back and forth after that and Harry drank more than was wise perhaps, but when he went home that evening it was with good spirits and a grin on his face.

\--

Harry’s late breakfast the next morning was interrupted by an owl from Gringots. Harry groaned, and received a nasty look from Kreacher for it. Dealing with Gringots’ bloody difficult letters while nursing a hangover was not high on his list of fun things to do. He silently longed for the days other people had taken care of this for him, these bloody letters were incomprehensible without a dictionary. Ah well, better take out the books then, this looked like it would take a while.

Later that day Harry found himself standing in one of the sitting rooms and frowning at a sofa. He had been standing here frowning at the settee for quite some time and it was getting embarrassing. Except… it was _just_ the wrong shade of blue. Which… wasn’t so bad, and he really shouldn’t care. But… it was the wrong shade. Harry grit his teeth and send the settee back to the attic with a wave of his wand.

Harry pulled softly on his hair before running his hand through it. He would have to go to a furniture store. He’d been trying to postpone that trip until all the rooms had been finished as far as he could but… this was really annoying. He tried to convince himself he didn’t care that some of the rooms on the ground floor looked unfinished but eventually gave up and went to look for Kreacher to see if he knew a store they could go to.

Kreacher, the bastard, just gave him an exasperated look and a ‘finally’, and later that day informed Harry they had an appointment at a furnishing store in two days.

Two days later Harry ate a hurried breakfast and then let Kreacher take him to the largest wizarding shopping districts in Western Europe. Which was, oddly enough, located in Luxembourg.

They arrived in a clean and nice looking street with both heavy stone buildings and small dainty shops with traditional looking white walls and dark wood. Above him was a large stone arch and Harry had to twist his head at an awkward angle to read the inscription in the stone. It had the words; ‘ _Groussherzogtum Lëtzebuerg - Stad Lëtzebuerg_ ’ inscribed with underneath in smaller lettering " _Mir wëlle bleiwe wat mir sinn_ ". Harry had no idea what any of it meant, but it looked impressive.

Before they had apparated Kreacher told him most countries had their specialties; the Dutch were spectacular potions masters, in Germany they made the best wards, and Norway and Sweden always competed for who could do the most outrages things with runes. But for the best furniture and interior design you would have to go to Luxembourg.

Now, looking at the busy streets and stores overflowing with people Harry wondered how he had ever thought Diagonally to be big. This place was huge, and the people clearly from many different countries, if their diverse styles of robes and clothing was anything to go by. The stores also seemed to have more space, and the expansion charm had not been used as much to cram an extra shop between two existing ones like in Diagon. Everything seemed a lot greener than Harry was used to, trees and plants lined the sidewalks and everything was a lot less… grimy. Harry could have stood there for hours and not get bored, but they had an appointment so Kreacher was already tugging him into the street towards the store they needed to be.

They came upon the store disappointingly fast, Harry had wanted a lot more time to look at all the strange shops and stalls (was that really a store that only sold blue things?). But Kreacher had no mercy despite Harry’s protest and firmly pushed him inside the furniture store.

On the inside _Marsh new and antique furniture store_ was roomy, with whitewashed walls and a thick luxurious carpet. The front area was clearly used to showcase some of their work, there were a lot of wood and fabric samples lining the walls and several pictures showing how certain items were made.

“Ah, Lord Potter-Black, welcome to our shop. My name is Emil and I shall be assisting you today. Please come through here.” Sounded at Harry’s right.

The man speaking was middle aged with a slight belly and blue eyes that wrinkled when he smiled at Harry, he looked more like someone who would work in a bakery rather than a furniture store. Harry followed the man to the back of the store and was put into a comfortable armchair in front of what looked to be some sort of stage. Harry tried to persuade Kreacher to take one of the other chairs, but the elf refused, glaring at Harry but clearly unwilling to reprimand him in public. The man, Emil, was clearly the unflappable sort and but down a small velvet children’s chair near Harry that Kreacher was willing to carefully perch on. Emil then offered him something to drink and sat down to discuss why he had come here today.

The conversation lasted over an hour, as Harry (with help from Kreacher) described what they were looking for and in what kind of room it was supposed to go. Emil wanted to know all sorts of things, what kind of furniture was in the room already and if it had a temperamental history. Harry was insanely glad for Kreachers input on this, the elf seemed to have memorised every piece of furniture that had ever been owned by the house of black.

The man seemed entirely unflappable, despite Kreacher’s sometimes bloody description of the history of certain pieces. The only time he seemed surprised was when Harry admitted that he had added the very few pieces that had survived from the Potter side. The Potter property had been completely levelled in the wake of Voldemort’s attack, but a few things that had been stored at Gringots had survived.

Eventually Emil nodded and told Harry he would get the first selection ready for viewing. What followed was something that made Harry think of miss-pageants that the Dursleys would sometimes watch. It was a parade of furniture that twirled and twisted as Emil told him something about each piece.

While at first Harry was a little uncertain about the proceedings, he quickly got the hang of it (with only a little prodding from Kreacher) and started asking questions about the pieces that he liked and putting aside the ones he wanted to buy.

Several times Emil went to the back of the store to select a new line up. The fourth time he walked back in with behind him a young woman with the darkest skin harry had ever seen. She wore bright orange and green clothes of an odd style that should have been garish, but she somehow made look elegant.

“Lord Potter-Black, let me introduce to you Madam Mhlanga-Nyuswa, the owner of this fine establishment.”

Harry rose from his chair to kiss the hand she offered, hoping that the courtesy rules Kreacher had him read about were the same in Luxembourg. And he hoped he could avoid trying to pronounce her name, he did not want to accidently insult her by mispronouncing.

He quickly found out she was a quick-witted woman who would be able to smooth talk even the surliest of customers. She was very nice and complementary, not at all daunted by his less-than-smooth small-talk. She sat down with him after a short chat and Harry discovered he liked her comments on the furniture that came parading by, it was clear she knew what she was talking about.

It was well past noon when Harry left the shop with a satisfied smile on his face. Though the number of galleons he had to fork over had nearly made him cry, Madam Mhlanga-Nyuswa had convinced him it was worth it.

Now he had the rest of the day to nose around the shopping streets to his heart content. Harry took great pleasure in walking around, inspecting the stores and stalls and trying to guess what they were selling by only looking at the signs with the name of the shop.

A small shop’s store sign caught his attention. It was not as neat as the other shops on the street and stood out because of it. There were plants and dried herbs hanging outside and the sign had “ _De wilde zwanen_ ” written on it in truly awful handwriting. The window had a lot of text on it in several languages, including English. It boasted with “ _The widest ranges of indoor-plants on this side of the world! (Or at least this street.)_ ” Harry grinned and dragged a lightly protesting Kreacher inside.

The shop was light and airy, with what seemed like a rainforest of plants coming from the ceiling, walls and racks. While he was looking around at the displays and trying to work out why some of the plants seemed to be in cages, a stern looking older lady dressed in an odd type of robe with an apron over it stepped up to him and spoke what he presumed was a greeting.

“Apologies, do you speak English?”

The lady gave a sharp look and bowed a little. “English it is. My name is Adelbrecht, how can I help you today?”

Harry gave a pointed smile back. “My name is Harry Potter-Black and I am looking for several plants to liven-up my newly renovated ancestral home. But I’m afraid I don’t know a lot about indoor plants.”

She gave him a piercing look when he mentioned his name but didn’t otherwise comment. The woman then went on to assure him that most wizards did not know much about indoor plants and started to ask him questions about what kind of plants he wanted.

“Do you want them to be merely decorative, or to have a function as well?”

Harry looked intrigued. “What kind of functions? I thought any plant with a function should be put in a greenhouse, or at least require a lot of upkeep, which I do not want to do.”

“Nothing that requires a lot of work then, but with a function. Hmm, what about a plant who handles the upkeep themselves? There are several sentient plant races that do well indoors.”

Harry grimaced a bit.  “No, nothing that has a clear mind of its own. Mandrakes already make me uncomfortable.”

 “Ah, so nothing too sentient then.” The woman cast a critical eye over her store. “Okay. Let me show you this...”

She brought Harry to a corner and began to show him several plants used for protection. Such as the Bat-thorn; a plant similar to wolfsbane that offered protection against vampires, or The Tanna bush against Inferi. But most of the plants did not impress harry much, something Adelbrecht seemed to take as a challenge, and showed him her collection of healing plants. She presented the Aum and told him all about the Arctus Mandibus. Harry was most impressed by the Blood orchids, who despite their unfortunate name helped with living a long and happy life. He also immediately had her set aside Crazee Dayzees and a Little Lotus Tree; both plants that helped with getting a good night’s sleep.

The more she talked about the plants the more she reminded him of one of those hippie women Aunt Petunia had complained about. Not in her dress or mannerisms, but in the way she spoke about feelings and sensations of the plants. Even when talking about the Blister Plant (that helped purify and regulate oxygen) and dried healing herbs such as Athelas and Corly Root.

Between the explanations about the plants she told him all about the shop and how she was a side branch of a bigger store that sold out-door plants. “Since the main shop is Dutch people expect certain things. But most people don’t realise indoor plants are a different thing altogether and don’t react to magic the same way greenhouse plants do.”

With some humour she showed him the Yangala-Cola; a mushroom that helped enhance eyesight and inner clarity and the Papadalupapadipu whose pods cured the common cold immediately for men but caused women to grow a moustache.

Harry had never known there were so many houseplants with amazing properties. Such as Blood Grass; best known for its alchemical capability of granting limited 'invisibility’ when nearby, or the Gingold that brought out your flexible nature. The Echo Flower, Shimmerweed, Vul Nut Vine and so many more where added to Harry’s pile. The lady was an excellent saleswoman, and before he knew it Harry ended up leaving the store with having bought a truly astounding number of plants and the promise to return if he ever had questions.

Harry looked at the expanded bag with plants. He had just meant to buy one or two! How in the world had he bought all of this? He was just glad that none of the plants had been very rare or expensive. Unfortunately for Harry the Accidental-Buying-Of-Too-Much-Stuff became a theme throughout the day.

He spent over an hour in a pottery (and kept silently laughing at the irony) where he bought, among other things, the nicest clay cups he had ever seen, pots for his new plants and mosaic tiles with runes on them representing elements in different forms to use on one of his yet unfinished walls. After that Harry’s eye got caught by a shop with modernist paintings but ended op leaving that place without a purchase. He could respect the skill that went into it but it wasn’t really his style.

It was Kreachers turn to salivate at the wares when they entered a store that sold pots, pans and odd wizarding kitchen appliance. Harry set Kreacher loose and later left the store with so much copper the bag needed three lightning charms.

At the woodworker’s shop Harry made an appointment, because he knew if he let himself go he’d buy half the shop. And while technically that wouldn’t be a problem money-wise Harry felt he had thrown around enough galleons today. Coming back in a fortnight with a list of what he actually needed was much better, Kreacher agreed.

After a bit of wandering around he entered a tiny shop called _Moerae_ with nothing inside except an ancient looking lady with a large nose and grey hair sitting behind a loom, and ended up paying a truly outrageous price for drapes and curtains that didn’t even exist yet.

The lady had been called Neith and had been ever so unimpressed by him. She had brought him a cup of tea and somehow he ended up spilling half his life story while Neith just made soft noises at the correct intervals and plied him with more biscuits. Afterwards she just took his hands in his own wrinkled ones and told him in soft tones about the myths of death and the gods that dealt with it that she had learned as a child.

Afterwards, when Harry felt a lot calmer and had a nice belly full of warm tea, she told him he was to come to her whenever he needed anything woven. She was going to start making drapes, curtains, valances and swags and he’d _better_ pay a good price. She gave him a look that went straight through him and ruffled his hair before ushering him out.

He ended up staying in the district until it got dark and ate in one of the many small restaurants located between the shops. When he went home after dinner it was with the intention of finding an excuse to come back here sometime soon.

\--

It was getting too cold to sit outside in the evenings, so Harry had ensconced himself in the conservatory with a few books. As he looked over his gardens he felt a strange peace settle over him. There were pixies playing around a nearby Hawthorne tree and a crow flew overhead with a sharp cry. Harry felt… right, like he belonged here. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this way.

Harry pushed his way over the wood grain of the table and then drank his tea. This was his house. If he ever had children they would inherit and live here, if not then Teddy could use it. It would be a family home, it would know joy and sadness and stand here until the end of days, even if there was no-one left to live in it. So Harry smiled and stroked the wall, imagining all the possible futures it could play a role in.


	2. The middle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve always thought of Ron as the quintessential Gryffindor; quick to anger, quick to laugh, a sense of righteousness and a bit slow to pick up on things. I have considerable more trouble with writing Hermione.

Ron’s mouth fell open. “This is Grimmauld Place?!”

Though they had sent letters semi-regularly He hadn’t seen Hermione in months, and Ron only on the few evenings he could get away from the apparent brutal auror training. But now Gimmauld place was finished and Hermione had graduated Hogwarts, so they had come to visit. So now Harry got to watch as Ron and Hermione walked through the newly decorated rooms and ‘oo-ed’ and ‘ahh-ed’ over things.

“How in the world did you do all this?” exclaimed Hermione “It looks like a completely different house! Even the layout is different.”

“Well, it is the Black ancestral home you know. That kind of old building can do a lot of things.” Harry shrugged.

“Yes” said Hermione slowly “I’ve read about that. Old buildings, but especially houses, acquire a personality of sorts because of all the magic that is poured into it. It can even take on some of the personality of the owner.”

Ron grinned. “Whatever the cause, it looks great. The artwork on some of these walls is awesome.”

Hermione nodded. “Indeed. And I really like your style, despite some of the grandiose rooms like the ballroom it looks very bohemian.”

“Bohemian? I’m not sure what that means, but this place is clearly pagan.” Ron said.

That got Ron surprised looks from both Hermione and Harry.

“Pagan? I just liked the look of things, thought it looked a bit hippie-ish myself. I never meant to do anything religious.” Harry said, looking as surprised as he felt.

Ron shook his head at Harry. “Nah mate, it’s not religious unless you set up altars to certain gods, but that doesn’t mean it’s not pagan.” He tapped his nose. “I played with the Lovegoods as a kid, remember, and Luna’s mom was as pagan as they come. You’re not far off with it being a bit like muggle hippies I think, just hippies with magic and stuff.”

Ron shrugged and didn’t seem to think it was strange Harry had apparently accidentally managed to make a pagan of himself. Harry tried to look around with unbiased eyes to see what was so pagan about the place. Perhaps the dried herbs? Or the many runes. Ah, okay. He could see why Ron would think pagan, maybe. Well, as long has he hadn’t unintentionally made some religious statements he didn’t mind.

“From what I’ve read on it there isn’t a lot of paganism in the United Kingdom anymore. They used to do all kinds of rituals and rites that nobody does anymore to strengthen the earth. A lot of it was about fertility and growing things from what I remember. There was also a strong connection with earth-magic and the elements I think, I read up on it when I found out they work a lot with ancient runes. There were several pagan texts that I studied for my exams.” Hermione enthused.

“Well Harry, my pagan friend.” Ron swung an arm around Harry’s shoulder. “I bet you could create a coven, there are enough people now who’d join.” He grinned.

Harry tried to think back to what little he had read about covens.

“Have I not already done that technically?” He asked a perplexed Ron and Hermione. “I mean, I forgot all the details about what exactly makes a coven, but I remember thinking that the DA complied with most of it.”

That startled a laugh out of Ron.

“I guess you’re right.” Said Hermione with a thoughtful look. “It is certainly not a traditional coven, but claiming it as one would not be outrageous. I mean, you could even argue we did some ritual work, though in a non-traditional way.” She smiled at Harry. “Though it is disbanded now, so even if it was sort-of-a-coven, it isn’t anymore.”

That ended the conversation, and left Ron and Hermione free to explore the rest of the house, though Ron took great glee in pointing out all the ‘pagan’ elements to Harry.

Eventually they ended up in the library, where Hermione pursued the shelves as Ron and Harry drank tea. Ron was enthusiastically telling them all about his chosen specialism and how great it was to work with the animals.

“Yeah, and now there’s new recruits y’know. It’s funny to see them scramble around, most of them wouldn’t be able to fight their way out of a paper bag. For Merlin’s sake, the best one of them is-“

Ron cut himself off abruptly and cast a sidelong glance at Harry.

“Well, uhm, the best of them is Pansy Parkinson.” Said Ron awkwardly, not looking Harry in the face.

“Pansy is in auror training?” Harry asked surprised.

“Uh yeah, I mean, she has a few restrictions about where she can go after she completes basic, but really, she’s by far the best of the lot.” Ron cast a sideling look at Harry. “Are you… are you okay with that? I mean…”

“It is fine. She was young, stupid and scared. I talked with her a few times before and after her trial, I’m alright with her.”

Ron still looked a bit uncertain, fidgeting with his sleeve. “I know you’re all about live and let live these days, but she almost gave you up, you sure you’re fine with it?”

“Yes.” Harry gave a little shrug. “It is all right. She served her sentence and paid her dues. I don’t hold it against her.” He smiled up at Ron. “Especially not if she’s as good as you say, competent ministry workers are in short supply.”

“Oi! Watch what you say. Both me and Mione are part of it now.”

Harry grinned. “Exactly my point.”

That got him a little shove and a lot of laughter as Hermione came to join them and play-frowned at their antics. She then launched in the story of how she got her new position at the department of justice. Though Harry didn’t really understand what she was going to do there, she seemed happy with it.

After dinner they ended up playing board games in one of the sitting rooms. He was just telling them about the time he found a deer in the forest behind the house when he noticed Hermione looking at him with an odd facial expression.

“You’ve changed.” Said Hermione. “I mean,” she hastily added “In more than in a ‘eating regular meals’ way. Your magic seems different, you even _look_ different.”

Harry shrugged a bit, feeling somewhat uncomfortable. “If you say so. Maybe it is just the lack of stress.” He tried to joke.

“It is more than that.” Said Hermione with the same odd look as before. “You’ve changed too much in too short a time, it’s a bit freaky.”

That felt like a punch in the guts. And he might have made little noise, but that was lost under the sudden loud yelling from Ron, who Harry hadn’t seen look so angry since he had brought down that last Death Eater.

Hermione looked at him. “Oh Harry, I’m so sorry. That wasn’t at all what I meant.” There were tears gathering in her eyes and she was shaking a bit, clearly upset at herself. “I just meant-“

“You meant _what_.” Barked Ron, who was now red in the face.

“It’s just you _died_ Harry. And the horcrux! And then everything just- I didn’t mean to say you were unnatural” she said wetly “I thought just maybe that it affected you.”

It took a while for them all to calm down enough to talk about it. Harry had a heavy feeling in his stomach but soldiered on.

“So you think dying and the extraction of the horcrux affected me in some way?”

“Yes” said Hermione, calmer now she had a cup of tea in her hands. “I had been thinking on it before but tonight was just -. You look and even act different. I had thought your letters were a bit odd, but seeing you here was… well it was an eye-opener. “

She looked down. “I did not mean it was anything bad and I’m sorry I used that word, but I noticed and had to tell you.”

“I just thought peace suited you” Ron said, now looking at Harry. “You don’t look that different or act that different I think, you’re just a bit… sharper.”

“Sharper?”

“Oh” said Hermione “Yes. Sharp, that’s the word.” She smiled a bit at Harry “You’re quicker to notice things, are more likely to speak up and you’re a bit more… opinionated. You even speak a bit more formal now, but that might just be from having Kreacher correct you all the time.”

Harry hesitated. “That… doesn’t sound so bad.” He said, his voice going up at the last word, almost making it a question.

“It isn’t.” ensured Hermione “It’s just that I thought the change came a bit too fast, and you know how I get…”

They all chuckled at that.

“Yeah Mione” said Ron slinging an arm around her shoulders “We know how you get. I don’t think it’s anything, but we’ll keep an eye on it. Better safe than sorry, right.”

He said that last part looking at Harry, who nodded.

“Indeed. Now, I think we all need a bit of a distraction. Would you guys like to see the forest that belongs to the property?”

“The what?!”

\--

It was a surprisingly cold morning in October, and Harry was glad he had let Kreacher talk him into buying a new and warmer cloak. His breath came out in puffs of mist and feet trampled the dew that had gathered during the night as a he made his way to the shrine.

Each time he came here he saw more and more animals. The first time Kreacher had shown him the place the forest had seemed strangely silent and animal-free. But now, as he wandered amongst the trees Harry could hear the rustle of rabbits and birds singing in the distance. Yesterday he had even spotted a deer! And now he saw a hawk sitting in a nearby Hawthorne tree, looking at him with beady eyes as he made his way to the clearing.

When he finally got there harry immediately felt a lot calmer. This place was always good for thinking or stress-relieve. He sat down on his cloak near the shrine this time, not willing to give himself a headache again trying to figure the ritual circle out.

Harry contemplated the shrine for a few moments. He had cleaned and taken care of it so far, but it still seemed like something was missing. The structure had always seemed like a dollhouse; with its pitched roof, windows and doors. But unlike most dollhouses it was rather empty and dark inside, with no small furniture or lights to liven it up. Harry tugged his cloak tighter around himself trying to stay warm.  Ah, perhaps that was needed; some heat and light.

He started to reach for his wand, but stopped himself halfway through the motion. He had read some of the books Kreacher had given him, and according to those… One of the books had talked about doing magic without a wand, which Harry had thought mighty interesting. Unfortunately the book had been insanely difficult to read and he had understood very little of it. He also lost most of his initial interest when he found out that wandless magic was only possible for what the book called ‘small magic’, which said enough really. But he kept reading it, or tried to at least, to figure out if it was possible to use wandless magic to summon his wand back to him if he lost it, the war was over, but it was better to be safe than sorry. One of the only things he had so far understood from the insanely complicated book was that creating a small flame was one of the easiest thing to do.

So carefully harry took a sharp piece of rock from the ground and took one of the little metal dish-things from the shrine. Carefully, very carefully he scratched a spiral into the metal. When he was done he held it hesitantly in his hands. What had the book said again? Oh right, friction or heat helped; things like snapping your fingers or rubbing hands together.

He looked down at his half-frozen hands and frowned, rather hard to generate heat when he was mostly frozen himself. Harry thought for a moment and then grinned, picking up the saucer in his frozen hands and holding it close to his face. He breathed out, and hot air came out in little clouds visible to the cold air.

It took more than a few tries, trying to force magic into your breath was a lot harder than forcing it into a wand, but eventually harry managed a spark. Absolutely thrilled Harry watched proudly as the little flame danced in the centre of the spiralled saucer. The flame had much more blue and green in it than a normal flame, but it seemed to work.

Carefully harry placed the saucer in the shrine, and stayed there watching the flame dance until he was nearly frozen solid.

\--

Harry had no idea how Kreacher had managed to talk him into this. Some major guilt-tripping and blackmail had probably been involved. But whatever the reason, here he was; walking through the ministry with Kreacher to get to the House-elf-registration office to look into hiring another house-elf.

He was halfway there before the first person recognised him. With a cry of “Mister Potter!” the man quickly stepped closer and tried to shake his hand. The man was unfortunately standing right in the doorway of the small side-hallway that Harry needed to pass through, and because of the small cart the man had been pushing he effectively blocked Harry’s path.

Ever since his defeat of Voldemort some people seemed to think he was common goods, and tried to touch him whenever and however they pleased. At first Ron and Hermione had been at his side to warn people off and then he had holed himself up in Grimmauld place, but now he only had himself and Kreacher. So he gave the man his haughtiest look and squared up.

The man reached out to him and Harry instinctively took a step back into the atrium. “I’ll thank you not to touch me sir, and the name is Potter-Black.”

“Oh come on Mister Potter, I just want to thank you!” The man took a step closer again and continued; “We’re all so grateful about you helping with that awful business with You-Know-Who. So very grateful. Say, you wouldn’t mind telling me a bit about it, would you? There are the official statements of course, but it’s better to hear from the horse’s mouth.” The man looked hopeful and tried to get closer again, reaching out to touch Harry.

It was the first time Harry had heard someone refer to the war as ‘that awful business’ and would like to never hear it again. He manoeuvred the glaring Kreacher between himself and the man.“You are welcome.” Harry said as politely as possible, trying to ignore the people behind him that were now starting to notice something was going on. “Now, I must be on my way Sir, I have an appointment to keep and you are blocking the hallway.”

The man opened his mouth again, clearly readying himself the spout more nonsense, but someone standing behind Harry intervened; “Everest, it is time for you to be on your way is it not? Lord Potter-Black clearly has business to attend to.”

An elderly woman in well-made purple robes stood there mildly glaring at the man who was apparently called Everest.

“Uhm- Oh yes Madam Harlow.” Everest said, now clearly nervous and aware of the commotion he had caused, hands fiddling with the cart he had been pushing.

“Best get on with it then.” Madam Harlow said, stepping up next to Harry.

He turned to Harry “Well, goodbye then Mister Potter.”

“Lord Potter-Black.” Madam Harlow corrected with a mild glare. “Are you deaf as well as slow?”

“Uhm, no. Bye Lord Potter-Black.” The man gave a strange half-bow and then turned around and fled the scene with the cart swinging wildly behind him.

Harry turned to Madam Harlow “Thank you very much.”

She snorted. “Some people these days…” She shook her head a little “Well, it is good to meet you anyhow Lord Potter-Black, my name is Madam Mildred Harlow.”

Harry kissed her offered hand. “And it is good to meet you as well Madam Harlow.”

“And what are you doing at the ministry today Lord Potter-Black? Following any latent political ambitions after all?”

Harry grimaced slightly. “Not at all Madam Harlow, I’m merely looking for the house-elf registration office.”

She gave him a sharp look at that and then declared she was largely going the same way herself and would escort him. Well, she said he could escort her, but that was clearly what she meant. On the way to the office Harry found out she was one of the members of the Wizengamot, had no children but four Kneazles (all named after prominent writers) and had gone in hiding during the war because she had been a long time defender of halfbloods and muggleborns, despite being of old blood herself. That coupled with an ‘unfortunate lack of skill at any useful curses’ had made her wait out the war in France.

“That is not to say” She said “That I agreed with Dumbledore of course. I believe in opening our society to halfbloods and muggleborns, not muggles themselves. I’m still a firm believer in the separation of our nations. That Dumbledore never did anything by halves, which is a shame, because he would have had a lot more supporters if he hadn’t defended the muggles so much. There are far more Wizengamot member than you think that are all for halfblood and muggleborn inclusion, even some creatures such as werewolves and veela’s are well thought off, but only a bitter few include muggles in that list.”

What resulted was a surprisingly interesting conversation about how the Wizengamot was trying to revamp the law by throwing out not only the things that might have been instated with influence from Voldemort, but also looking at far older laws and judge their merit. It would take a long time to go through all of it of course, years probably, but Madam Harlow didn’t seem to mind that.

“Too many of the Wizengamot members have spent far too much time sitting on their behinds, it will do them some good to have to work again.”

By the time they went their separate ways she had expressed her disappointment in Harry not going into politics several times, but eventually subsided. Politics wasn’t something Harry had ever been interested in, and he didn’t think that would ever changes. Oh, he might have opinions on legislation or the result of it, but sitting in a chamber and debating every detail on the newest Kneazle breeding plan or rehashing the laws cauldron bottom thickness wasn’t his idea of fun, nor something he wanted to do professionally.

There was only one man in the house-elf registration office, and after only the bare minimum of fawning the man, who was thin and tall with a nose larger than even Snape’s had been, introduced himself as Keneth Bains. He sat Harry down with a cup of tea and the correct forms to fill in. Harry knew that most people didn’t own house-elves because it was too expensive, but even if it weren’t he felt the paperwork alone would be enough to warn most people off. He occasionally had to ask Kreacher for help when in concerned some detail about the house of Black, but the house-elf who already disliked confirming he existed outside of Grimmauld place clearly didn’t like the office and stayed mostly silent. After hours of filling in paperwork, answering Bains’s questions and explaining his role in S.P.E.W. Harry was finally introduced to Isla, the head-elf.

After checking the paperwork and asking both Harry and Kreacher a few questions the head-elf led them into a large room that seemed to house at least fifty house-elves. Harry looked at them in surprise; these house-elves were very young. Younger than he had ever seen Dobby.

“There is being a visitor.” Said the head-elf in a soft voice. But the previous bussy but calm house-elves suddenly whipped themselves up in a flurry of excitement. There was a short period of noise and movement and then they were all lined up neatly, waiting for the head-elf to speak and looking at Harry and Kreacher with varying degrees of hope and curiosity.

“This is being Sir Lord Potter-Black. He is seeking for good strong house-elfses to work for the Ancient and Noble house of Black. Yous is to be listening carefully to what Sir is looking for, and stepping back when you is not wanting to go with sir.”

Kreacher looked distrustfully at the lined-up elves, and Harry saw a few of them already wilting under his glare.

Kreacher spoke first. “Master Lord Potter-Black is be needing a hardworking house-elf who will learn about the Ancient and Noble house of Black and the house of Potter and appreciates working for such old and great families. Master Lord Potter-Black is restoring the Ancient and Noble house of Black to its former glory and upholding the honour of the Potter house, any elfses that be even _thinking_ of working for my master should be strong and clever enough to uphold all that that is meaning.” He said with a glare to any elves he might think unworthy.

It was the first time Harry heard Kreacher refer to him by his full title, and he was touched by Kreacher’s addition of the house Potter, well aware that thinking of any other house than Black did not come natural to the elf.

There were already elves who stepped out of the lines to sit back down in the back of the room, clearly no longer interested in working for him after Kreacher’s speech. Kreacher finished glaring at the elves and turned to Harry.

Oh right, now came his part.

“Yes, I am looking for a house-elf.”

That statement alone got him squeaks and scared looks from some. He smiled, but some of the elves seemed genuinely frightened of him when he did for some reason.

“I am currently living in the Ancestral house of the Black family together with Kreacher, but the grounds are extensive and the house itself is large as well so we need some help in keeping it all in working order. I am looking for one or two house-elves to live with us who can help manage the grounds, keep up the house, advise me and argue with me when needed.”

That was clearly enough to dissuade a large number of elves, who all stepped to the back of the room, no longer interested in working for him.

“I am one of the founders of S.P.E.W; The Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare, and will not be bonding with anyone who wants to work for me and live with me the way many wizards do.”

That received him a lot of confused squeaking, and then most of the house elves stepped back, leaving only ten or so standing to attention. Harry grinned at them, which strangely enough made one of the elves left yelp and step back as well.

“Instead of a standard bond you will receive a formal contract similar to those any witch or wizard might receive when pledging their life to a family. Any bond that might result from that will have to grow naturally for both parties, and it is not guaranteed one will develop at all.” He gave the elves a stern look, hoping to convey how serious he took this part; he would not be a slave-owner. “As payment for working for me you will receive 1 galleon a month, 1 day off every week and means for any hobbies you have or things you want to learn. I am however willing to negotiate on this.”

In the end only eight elves were interested in working for him. So the head elf led the elves and Harry to a separate room so he could interview them. The first elf Harry talked with was rather bland and the second overly motherly in a way that did not sit well with Harry. But the third one made him sit up straight.

 “This is being Rainy Sir.”

The aforementioned elf shot the head-elf such a nasty glare Harry almost backed away. Then the elf turned his head back to address Harry.

“I is being Rain, Sir Lord Potter-Black. And I is interested in working for yous. I be liking cleaning and cooking and learning new things. Working for sir sounds like much variety, and Rain is excited to be working for a founder of S.P.E.W - he is hearing many good things - , and learning from Head-elf Kreacher about the Black and Potter histories.”

That last one made Harry grin from ear to ear, and Rain smiled happily back at him, not at all afraid of his smile like some of the other elves had been. The little elf seemed to have score some points with Kreacher as well, who wasn’t nearly glaring as hard at him as he had at the others.

“Rainy is being a curious elf.” The Head-elf sounded somewhat reproachful, but Harry was quite taken with the fierce little elf, who had no problem with making a face at the head-elf for mispronouncing his name again.

Harry decided interview the rest of the elves because it was the polite thing to do, but he had made his choice. That is, until he met the last elf.

She was called Ivy and reminded him so strongly of Dobby that he had to take a moment to collect himself.

He had no idea why she reminded him of Dobby so much because she was almost literally his opposite; quiet and a bit timid where Dobby had been loud, her answers thoughtful where Dobby had been impulsive. But they both had that strangeness. She didn’t quite fit in with the other elves the same way Dobby hadn’t. She stood a little too strait, preferred working outside instead of inside and the head elf told him she was not always obedient, working around her orders if she didn’t like them. She was also just as shameless about it as Dobby had been, though a bit quieter.

Her teeth were a little too sharp for a house elf, and the look in her eyes a bit too pointed as she looked back at Kreacher. So Harry smiled and hired her on the spot.

After that is was just a matter of sorting out and signing the contracts. Rain and Ivy managed to argue the payment down to 2 knuts a month, the right to do whatever they want to their private quarters and 2 day of no work each month. They had not objected to receiving means to learn new trades or to picking out their own uniform. Rain chose a traditional toga like Kreacher but Ivy preferred a tunic, Kreacher only protested when he saw her looking at neon-green fabric, hastily declaring they would wear Black or Potter colours.

After that Kreacher apparated them all home and immediately started lecturing the two new elves while Harry had a little sit-down as he tried to figure out what in the world he was thinking of when he hired two new house-elves. How would he ever face Hermione again?

\--

Harry was taking a bath when the first bang sounded. It had been raining for a week straight now, steadily getting heavier until now finally the storm had come. He had always enjoyed a bit of thunder and lightning and had been looking forward to it all week.

There was a new flash followed with a clap of thunder a minute later. Harry grinned and looked out of the bathroom window down on the wet and muddy grounds, he’d loved running around outside during storms as a kid.

Harry sat up in bath just as lightning flashed again. What stopped him from going outside now? He grinned, jumped out of the bath and hastily shrugged on a robe – not bothering with anything else. He rushed down the stairs on bare, still wet, feet and was through the conservatory and out the backdoor before he even thought about shoes. Just as he closed the door behind him there was another flash of lightning, with the thunder following a bit closer now.

So Harry stood barefoot on the muddy grass with arms spread wide and wildly grinning face tilted towards the sky. Should Kreacher or Rain see him like this he would sure get a heart attack, he thought Ivy might join.

Another flash and bang, now nearly overhead. He could feel it now, as he turned around the field with his arms spread. Something was in the air, maybe static electricity maybe magic, but it felt wonderful. Mist was drifting towards him from the forest and he tried make it dance with his magic, but couldn’t remember at the moment what the book had said on how to do it. Nevertheless he managed some swirls, though that might just have been because he was twirling around himself.

Lightning flashed overhead and Harry laughed out loud as he danced through his muddy fields cloaked by mist and rain.

\--

Having three house-elves working for him was a bit disconcerting at times. Rain and Ivy had quickly settled in and had taken to living in the Black Manor like to ducks to water. Rain had taken on the cleaning and most in-house chores (he seemed to have taken a real liking to Kreacher’s somewhat forceful approach to everything Harry thought when he had to endure another lecture on his behaviour from an angry house-elf). Ivy had taken one look at the grounds outside, the half-rotten barn, the gardens and the greenhouses and declared it her domain. It was made clear that Harry had no say in these matters whatsoever, and he was happy enough to leave them to it.

Hermione’s reaction to him having two additional house-elves when he finally told her had surprised him. She seemed delighted he had done it for some reason. She had said it was better for them to have a good home with a proper contract like Harry had given them than be adopted by some wizard or witch who treated them horribly. Apparently she would have hired some herself, but simply lacked the funds to do so.

Harry felt a lot better about it after that conversation. It was strange however to have no chores to do himself anymore. Previously he had spend a large part of each day on cleaning and other chores that he hoped Kreacher wouldn’t notice, so now he had quite some time to spare. It was a bit odd to have someone help him with everything. Books were magically back in their proper place when he left them laying out, his study was tidied and Rain even attempted to dress him each morning! He had tried to fight the elf over that, but eventually agreed that Rain would pick out his clothes for the day and lay them out but he’d put them on himself. Some of that went out the window on the days that Rain picked clothes with complicated fastenings or layers. (And Harry was somewhat outraged at the fact he even owned something so difficult to put on.)

Even though Rain was wonderful, Harry found that he found it easier to talk to Ivy. Despite his rebellious streak Rain was clearly traditionally-minded in a lot of matters when it came to serving a master, especially a Lord Master – or so the elf told him. Ivy was a lot more relaxed and had an easier time asking or strait out demanding things from Harry, despite her quiet nature.

She had thrown herself into gardening with a fervour that frightened Harry slightly. He had almost been afraid to find all the lovely foliage gone and only have some finely manicured flowerbeds left. Fortunately that was not the case; after a few conversations about it Harry found that he and Ivy had largely the same ideas when it came to gardening. Only around the terrace and in the greenhouses were things structured and manicured, everything else needed little involvement. The elf had been very enthusiastic about planting some new things that would help with fertilising the grounds and adding some more magic to it.

Ivy also was a big lover of animals and told Harry about it every time she spotted a rabbit or larger animal in the forest. It took some very unsubtle hinting and her showing Harry the newly mended stables before he understood that she wanted him to have some animals. She showed him all the rooms she had fixed in the truly gigantic barn, which now had an aviary and all sorts of specialised stables for exotic and common animals, as she kept commenting on how wonderful it would be to fill it and how good it would be for Master Harry to have a pet.

Harry had said he’d think on it, but had made no promises yet. He suspected Ivy had taken to feeding and petting some of the rabbits since some of them had become far more docile, so he knew she would take matters in her own hands if he did not. He eventually managed to coax a few snakes from the forest into spending the winter in the reptile room of the barn, but had otherwise as of yet failed to add anything else. The snakes had unfortunately not appeased Ivy, who wanted something that needed more caring for.

Kreacher seemed to be far happier as well with the two new additions to their household. The meals Harry received were getting more and more elaborate, and he found out Kreacher baked some excellent biscuits. Between Kreacher’s disapproving stare and Rain’s fussing he had even managed to learn some table manners to go with the elaborate dishes.

\--

Meeting up with Neville and Luna had been one of Harry’s better ideas. Ron and Hermione had been fine in small dosages, so he’d thought he’d try to reach out to a few more people. He saw Ron when he schedule allowed and Hermione even less than that; even now she had graduated Hogwarts she always seemed to be busy. Which was fine with Harry, over-exposure to some people had been what had driven him to Grimmauld place, and he quite liked the life he had build for himself without Ron and Hermione’s constant presence. But he was a bit afraid of turning into a hermit, so he had written Neville, exchanged a few letters (in which he found out Luna was staying with him, how that happened was anyone’s guess) and eventually decided to meet.

They were now sitting in Neville’s garden, talking about the over-lap between herbology and earth-magic. Harry wished he could take notes on this conversation; Neville clearly knew what he was talking about and Luna had all sorts of knowledge on unusual magics. He learned a lot, even when changing to other topics. Neville clearly had clearly made a lot of friends after the war and knew all the latest gossip of what everyone was up to.

Harry eventually left after dinner with a few borrowed books from Neville and advice from Luna that if he wanted to only attract fairies and not Nargles he should really put an offering of meat inside a fairy ring and be careful not to leave any cheese out.

\--

Sitting down in his study Harry decided he would do something useful with his time today. Since the addition of Rain and Ivy to the household he had more time to spare than he knew what to do with. He had found a few new hobbies to occupy him, such has walking or running in the forest and reading, but he found himself wanting to do something useful or perhaps learn something new.

So today he was going to look at some books on magical subjects he found himself interested in to see if it was something he seriously wanted to study and learn about. He had found introductory study books on warding, healing, arithmancy, runes, haruspicy, rituals, object enchanting and many other topics. Anything that had looked even slightly interesting he had added to the pile, just to be thorough.

It was a lot more work than he realised, and when dinner rolled by he had only managed to read the basics on three topics. Runes still seemed interesting after a cursory introduction, but already arithmancy and warding had far too many numbers and complicated calculations in it for his liking.

He spend the rest of the evening after dinner reading for leisure, but was determined to read up on at least three other topics tomorrow as well. He already knew a lot of things in life that he didn’t want to do; go into politics or join the aurors and other things people though they could talk him into. But perhaps now it was time to find out what he _did_ want to do. And even if he didn’t find a profession in here, he could at least learn a cool new skill.

\--

“So, Harry” Ron said one night when out drinking together. They had gone to this pub several times now, and Harry had come to quite like the place. It was small and Harry had never seen more than 5 people inside at once, but nobody ever bothered him or Ron, or wanted to talk about the war. The barman was still as strange as ever though, with his strange looks, thin figure and grim face. Harry had seen him grin only once, and his teeth had been far too pointy.

“So” Ron reiterated “how’s your garden?”

Harry eyed him suspiciously. “What do you want?”

“What do you mean ‘what do you want’, I was just asking a question.” Said Ron indignantly.

“You only sound like that when you want something or are in trouble, and since there’s nothing burning nearby you want something.” Harry said.

“Hermione is the pyromaniac! Not me.”

“Quit stalling.” Harry said in a huff, trying to hide a smile.

“Fine. You see-”

Apparently what Ron wanted was to kill him through proxy. In his work Ron often had to help locate illegally bred animals to a new home. The problem however, was in finding a home for some of these creatures. Usually they were really wild and could go to some remote forest somewhere, and if they were domesticated there were enough care-homes and ministry officials or organisations that wanted to take them on. The problem came when an animal was too domesticated to set free in some forest, but wild enough to be feared by the care-facilities.

So now Ron was looking a Harry with beseeching eyes. It seemed that there were three dog-like creatures that were currently forming a problem, and Ron clearly thought Harry could handle them, if only because of the vast amounts of space he could offer.

Harry finally sighed. “All right. I will take a look. But no promises!”

Ron whooped in joy.

\--

Harry closed the book with a snap while trying to keep from blushing. He’d been looking up things to help with the fertility of his lands and gardens, not because there were any problems with it, but both Neville and Ivy had told him that magical plants and animals preferred magical saturated earth. So he had been trying to find something on that and somehow ended up in a pagan book who’s solutions mostly seemed to involve having sex or masturbating on the forest-floor in a runic circle of sorts.

He might have surprised himself with being sort-of pagan, but this was going too far. Besides, he thought as he looked outside at the snow covering the grounds, it was much too cold for that.

\--

Almost a week later Ron was escorting Harry through the ministry to take a look at what Ron himself called Hell-Dogs. Ron was clearly in his element and couldn’t be happier with his job, Harry was just a bit unsure if he could handle even one creature that was a hell-dog, let alone three.

They went through several offices and security checks (only one person tried to ask his autograph, and Ron glared at her so hard she might have peed her pants) until they were eventually standing in front of a large stone door. The man standing next to the door checked Harry’s papers and Ron’s badge for the last time and then Ron did complicated magic to open the door.

Inside was a cacophony of noises and smells, Harry had no idea where to look. At first he thought they had stepped outside, but then he recognised the charms used. Ron step forward, onto a wide path that lay between cages. Though cages was the wrong word, the space that each animal had was huge, clearly though some complicated charm work, and tailor made to fit an area that each beast would like.

As Harry walked past it looked like most cages were empty, but Ron ensured him that was not the case. The habitats merely went very far back, and most animals only loitered around the front gates around feeding-time.

“It’s all temporarily of course.” Ron told him “Most animals only stay here for a few weeks before they’re relocated to somewhere better. But they need to be registered first which can take some time, especially if we find several illegal animals at once.”

They were nearing the end of the path when Ron stopped turned to one of the last few cages on the left. It was far smaller than the earlier habitats and clearly meant for some sort of procedure. In the room thee dogs lay; two next to each other and one a little further back. Well, ‘dogs’ was a big word. One of the two ‘dogs’ in the front seemed to have a skin made of grey stone scales with broad muscles and a blunt head with strange bony protrusions either side of its fanged mouth. The one next to it was slimmer, but just as tall and seemed to have a coat of shining black needles that were threateningly staring to rise in response to him and Ron.

The one at the back seemed the most doglike at first glance; it was the smallest and looked a bit like a picture of a wild wolf with a normal coat of brown and black. But then the dog moved his head to look at them with sightless eyes without pupils of even dull black, and Harry decided it was probably the least dog-like of them all.

“Yeah, that one’s the leader. She and the black one are female, the big stone one is male. C’mon, let’s see if they like you.”

With that gave harry some raw meat and shoved him into the cage, nearly giving Harry a heart-attack until he noticed there was another gate between him and he dogs, holding them back from devouring him at once. They were now all standing up, clearly having noticed the meat, and were slowly making their way towards him.

“Like I said, they’re fine with some people, but not others. We think it’s something to do with magical power levels, but aren’t sure yet. But you should be fine I think, the gate is just there as precaution.” Ron added helpfully.

The leader of the pack was now standing directly in front of Harry, sightless black eyes trained on the hand holding the meat. Harry threw a piece to her, and it was gone in one big gulp. The other two now joined.

“Yeah.” Said Ron. “The more power, the more willing they are to follow and listen. You’ll be fine. If you take them home they might eventually bond and allow you to name them.”

They kept getting closer and closer, until their muzzles were pressed against his hands as they licked up the blood left between his fingers. He carefully let them smell him and then cautiously reached out to pet the different kinds of fur.

Then suddenly the dogs were surrounding him, sniffing at his clothes and trying to figure out if he had more food. Harry just kept petting them and look back at a wildly grinning Ron.

“Fine.” Said Harry sourly “I’ll take them.”

It took a while to extract himself from the excitement, but within a few minutes he was out of the cage again. He looked back at the now far less frightening dogs. They didn’t seem very wild, why would no one else take them home? When he asked Ron he just got a headshake in return.

“Nah. Look at this mate.”

Harry hadn’t really noticed how Ron had kept his distance from the cage the whole time, the closest he had been was when he shoved Harry through. Now he stepped up close, and the reaction was immediate. The dogs that half a minute ago had been licking his hand and looking for treats now completely lost it. They went from nothing to absolutely bloody murder is less than a second. There was growling, barking and other noises dogs probably shouldn’t be able to make. They were literally trying to bite through the bars to get to Ron and, presumably, rip his throat out.

Ron stepped back and they calmed down a bit again.

“See, I told you.” Ron said “And that isn’t even so bad, you should see them have a go at some of the less powerful people here, I swear they’re trying to manifest as a demons or something.”

“Don’t be dramatic.” Harry said, looking at the dogs who had now retreated a bit further back into the cage, while still keeping an eye on Ron.

“I’m not being dramatic! Now, do you want a tour or what?”

The tour was amazing, and the animals mostly looked very happy in their current habitats. Ron went to great length explaining about each creature’s ancestry and how it violated the breeding ban. Harry was fascinated by the opaque jellyfish like creatures, slightly scared by something Ron called a fire-chicken and exclaimed his surprise at how many cats where there.

“Kneazle is the easiest thing to breed.” Ron shrugged. “Most of the illegally bred animals have some cat or kneazle in them, your Hell Dogs probably as well.”

There was also a vast array of birds who were mostly put in one large cage together. There were several smaller cages for birds that had too much predator in them to be trusted around the others. Harry stopped at a small cage with huge bird in it. It was nearly a meter tall! And unfortunately the cage wasn’t much bigger. It was the first time since Harry had come down here he had seen an animal in less than optimal conditions.

“What is that?” Harry asked.

“She’s a mix of several breeds and some seriously weird magic, but hawk and craw is the most prominent in her looks and behaviour.” Ron said.

“Why is her cage that small?”

“Her claws and are wicked sharp, so she’s got to go in there until we can find a home for her. She kept clawing through all the normal bars like it was nothing every time she wanted more food. This is the only cage strong enough to hold her, but because of the material it’s made of we can’t do anything about the size.” Ron said.

“I hope she’s adopted soon then.” Harry said.

Ron sighed. “She’s domesticated so she’ll probably be fine. Or well, far more domesticated than those hell dogs of yours.” He reached out to pet the raven, but was pecked at for his troubles. “The breeder tried to breed in clairvoyance or something through rituals and carving runes on the egg before it was born. Which is weird, ‘cause why would you want a clairvoyant bird? It’s not like they can talk. But from what we can see it had no effects other than her size and give her unusually strong claws.“

Harry scrutinised the bird and found it looking staunchly back at him. He cautiously held up a finger, but even though she looked at it suspiciously she didn’t try to peck at it like she did with Ron. Carefully he scratched her neck and watched as she crooned. He drew his hand back and turned to Ron with pleading eyes.

Despite Ron’s protests Harry ended up leaving with the promise of soon having three dogs and the crow delivered to his doorstep.

\--

While the scar on his forehead had faded to only thin lines since his defeat of Voldemort, other scars were not so quick to fade. The healers had told him there was little they could do for several of the scars on his shoulder, hip and foot. Much to Harrys consternation they had not been able to remove the reminder of Umbridge’s torture from the back of his hand; too much magic and too old.

There reason he was here today was mostly the large piece of flesh that was missing from his left hip. He wasn’t sure what curse had hit him there, but the healers had not been able to re-grow it, that coupled with a missing toe was always leaving him slightly off-balance. Today they would see if the scars were healed as much as they could so they could give him a prosthetic toe at least if necessary. So first he had an appointment for a general check-up on his health and scars, and after that immediately a meeting with someone who specialised in prosthetics. However, to even get to that first appointment he’d have to wade through half of St Mungo's.

The witch at the reception desk had only done some minimal fawning thankfully and kept everything low profile. However, when walking through the hallways some over enthusiastic healers seemed to think that they had some right to his time. Most were luckily dissuaded by his insistence at arriving on time for his appointment, but some needed some harsher language to get rid of. The last in the row of interested parties was proving to be hard to lose.

The slimy looking man had not introduced himself to Harry, but seemed to consider himself an expert on resurgences and near-death experiences and he was currently both pestering Harry for information on his experience and doubting said experience had ever happened.

Finally Harry stepped into an empty lift, with the smarmy healer following doggedly, ranting about white lights and how Harry shouldn’t doubt his expertise. At the last moment before the doors closed and stepped back out.

“Goodbye,” Harry said “I’m sure you’ll eventually find someone who cares about your opinion.” and watched the doors slide shot right in front of the insufferable healer’s nose.

He got to his first appointment without further incidents. The check-up itself was done by a blond unsmiling witch with beady eyes who clearly didn’t give a damn about Harry’s fame. She asked him some questions while casting diagnostic charms before she declared his scars healed enough and his health good enough for prosthetics. So he dressed himself again and waited politely in the small allotted waiting room to see another healer about receiving said prosthetics.

After waiting for nearly forty minutes he was shown into the healer’s office by a young male nurse who was clearly very impressed by Harry but too shy to do anything about it.

He healer herself was a stern looking Mediterranean woman with dark curly hair and dangling earrings who introduced herself as Healer Galatas with a firm handshake. Hearler Galatas asked far more uncomfortable questions and cast many more spells on his person before indeed approving of him receiving any prosthetics. After that there was a long conversation about what he wanted and how the procedure would be conducted.

He would receive a prosthetic for both a new toe and the hole on his hip, since they were the most hindering of his injuries. Five of his other scars, would be ‘filled’, to ensure they wouldn’t interfere with the casting of his magic, as sometimes could happen with magical curse scars.

He was taken to another room where he was given a hospital gown before healer Galatas and two of her assistants started on the procedure for giving him a new toe. It took nearly an hour of all three of them casting complicated magic before harry could wiggle his new ghostlike toe. Afterwards the two assistants looked exhausted and even healer Galatas had to brush back some dark hair from a sweaty forehead.

There was a short break as the assistants were send away and two new assistants were brought in to assist in the next procedure. The casting on his hip was a lot more uncomfortable and took almost two hours. The result was an odd-looking patch of what seemed to be black scales. Healer Galatas had warned him something like this might happen, both the fact he was a parselmouth and the lingering traces of basilisk venom in his blood could have some effect when healing the body like this.

Healer Galatas was now looking dead on her feet as two new assistants were brought in. She didn’t cast any spells herself in the following procedure, but looked on critically at where the assistants were filling in the scars on Harry’s neck and shoulder with something that looked like a dark gleaming metal.

He had spend nearly the whole day in St. Mungo’s, and by the time he flooed back home it had been dark outside for a while. But harry made the return journey with a smile on his face and a bounce in his step. He kept wiggling his toes and running his hand over his new hip; it had been a long time since his body had felt this good and whole.

\--

December was nearing and Harry was a bit split on what to do. He had been reading about traditional wizarding holidays and had found out that apparently Halloween and Christmas were not part of that, or at least, not in those forms. Traditionally wizards seemed to celebrate midwinter, which seemed to involve as much food as Christmas, but far less gift-giving. It was a festival that was celebrated upon the winter solstice and held some connection with muggle Yule celebrations as both celebrated the passing of the longest night of the year and involved a lot of bonfires, candles and singing. On the wizarding side there were several traditional rituals and foods that seemed to be involved, some strangely wild dances, handmade presents and white robes for young children.

There were three other mayor holidays that were celebrate all over the world by wizard kind, or so the book told him; midsummer (which was the direct opposite of midwinter and celebrated life, light and the sun), the vernal equinox in spring and the autumnal equinox. The book he had found referenced several other holidays such as Samhein which seemed to be the wizarding version of Halloween.

According to the book those four main holidays were practiced in similar ways all over the world by wizards and witches, but other holidays could have large cultural differences depending on country and region. Harry felt a bit… cheated that he had never even heard of these celebrations while at Hogwarts. After some digging he found out that before Dumbledore had ascended as headmaster they had celebrated these four plus a few others at Hogwarts for centuries, but Dumbledoor had, in a bid to make the muggleborns feel more included, decided to only celebrate Christian holidays. Which Harry sort of understood; if he had suddenly had to celebrate all sorts of wizarding holidays he knew nothing about after only just getting to Hogwarts he would have felt weird. But there was nothing wrong with celebrating both or giving people the option of choosing, not to mention how weird it must be for the children raised in the wizarding world, who suddenly had to celebrate something they knew nothing about.

He talked about with his grandmother’s portrait after realising what he had missed out on. She and the other portraits had been baffled and outraged at Christian holidays being celebrated at Hogwarts. They all promised to help him understand these wizarding holidays, but then got into arguments with each other because each person had _slightly_ different customs.

Just to be certain he ordered few books from Flourish and Blots’ on the topic, to make sure that he knew of everything that was involved in having a proper midwinter celebration.

\--

The dogs hadn’t allowed him to name them yet, but Harry was a bit glad for it to be honest. As turned out; he was horrible at naming things. He was either not creative enough or a tad too creative, so he had eventually resorted to going through some books to find a name for the crow. After some searching and deliberation with Ivy (who had firmly shot down his suggestions of ‘Will’ and ‘Chucky’, and would not be swayed by his insistence they were a unisex names) he had chosen to name her Morrigan.

Though Morrigan had had some training in delivering letters, she clearly had no real love for it and it took Harry some persuading and treats every time he wanted to send something. Luckily he didn’t send a lot of letters in general and often his friends would have their own owls wait for a reply anyway.

Harry, Morrigan and the dogs had been bonding rather quickly with all the time Harry spent on the grounds. Winter was melting away to make room for spring and as the ground thawed Harry spend more and more of his time outside. Threes were coming back to life and during his trip through the forest with the dogs they had more than once taken off to try and catch a rabbit.

There were an unusual amount of rabbits for this time of year, and he feared the population explosion that would come when spring fully arrived. He suspected Ivy of having fed the small mammals many more times than she would admit to and helping them keep warm through the winter. When he had asked her about it she had talked around the subject in a way that was very admirable for a house-elf, but when she finally understood the danger that a rabbit overpopulation could bring she suggested hunting them.

Harry thought it a bit strange that she would suggest hunting the creatures she had so lovingly cared for, but a flash of her unusual sharp teeth and a ‘It is being part of life master Harry.’ had reminded him of the nature of his house-elf. He had been intrigued with the idea of hunting with his dogs, but wasn’t sure it would work. They listened well and Harry had practiced several commands, but that was different from them listening to him when they smelled blood.

After reading on the subject extensively in both muggle and magical books and receiving advice from several of the portraits who had hunted as well in their time he decided to try, but only with both Morrigan and Ivy with him as well. Morrigan because he thought she might enjoy the hunting as well and Ivy because she seemed to have a lot of knowledge on how to hunt and might enjoy it as well.

The ensuing hunt was… not disastrous. The animals all behaved perfectly but it was _Harry_ who clearly needed to learn a lot more before becoming an even halfway decent hunter. Harry had known hunting involved a lot more than just walking around hoping to spot an animal, but he hadn’t realised who bloody difficult it was, especially when hunting something that was sensitive to magic. The books he had read had advised the use of several spells, but since his grounds were so saturated with magic even the normal rabbits had grown some sixth sense in sensing danger.

He had to be constantly corrected by Ivy on the way he walked, where he walked, what direction to take and which spells to cast. Even the speed and power at which he cast the spells seemed to matter. The dogs on the other hand had no problems following any trails and were obedient enough to not devour their prey in one go once they finally caught something.

Despite the somewhat lacklustre results Harry decided he quite liked the hunting, it gave their normal aimless walks around the forest some meaning and even gave Morrigan a challenge. Though he needed a lot more practice before he’d ever catch anything on his own.

\--

Harry would never be one of those people who could study hours on end for the sheer joy of it. He now spend a good three or four hours each day studying one of the topics he was interested in, and couldn’t do much more without getting distracted again. At the moment he was mostly focusing on runes, ritual magic and small magic, but earth-magic and several other little known specialisations were also on the list. For some of the topics he had found tutors that were willing to teach through owl post but others, like small magic, were self study only.

And now Harry had found another project to keep him busy. He had been thinking about it for a while, but was eventually spurred on by Hermione, who kept complaining that no longer having access to Hogwarts’ library was heavy on her wallet.

Harry hadn’t necessarily felt the blow of it that hard himself because he had the Black library, but he had always thought it odd that there were no public libraries in Diagonally. After some searching he found that there were no libraries in England, or even Europe! Well, no, that was worded wrongly, there were libraries but they simply weren’t open to the general public. All the libraries were meant for scholars and other highly educated folk. Membership was very exclusive, not to mention expensive, and seemed to be more of an indication of status than anything else.

Despite what some people thought he still wanted to contribute to society, just not by being an auror or flinging himself into politics. Opening a library had been a stray thought at first, but the more he thought about it the more he liked it. There were so many ways that society could benefit from having a public library. The way it introduced and helped children with reading and helping pre-school education, the offer of inexpensive meeting space for community organizations and educational and entrepreneurial activity, but most importantly; how people could have actual access to books without having to buy a copy.

He was getting really enthusiastic about it, and before he knew it he had a long list of things he wanted his library to offer. Things like having a large children’s section, including muggle authors (especially fiction), rooms to study in, offering database and maps, and his list went on and on. And the more he wrote down, the more he was convinced this was a good idea to try. If he asked a small monthly fee he could even make some money from it!

So today he had decided to start to try and make this a reality. There was probably a lot more involved in it than he knew about, but he would learn.  Spitting through law-books to find out if it was even legal to set up a library wasn’t his idea of fun but, he grinned at himself, this was what having a job was like as well; not all aspects of it could be fun.

\--

Visiting the ministry was never Harry’s favourite thing to do, but being not only the saviour of the wizarding world but also Lord Potter-Black meant he occasionally had too. He had luckily been able to handle the business quickly today, they had only needed his signature on some paperwork (why they couldn’t have send it by owl Harry had no idea) so any children or appointed heirs of his could inherit the current inactive seats of Potter and Black on the wizengamot.

He had expected to be stuck in some office all day, so was in a very good mood when he finished reading and singing parchments after only two hours. In a much better mood than he had been that morning harry strolled through the ministry toward the apparition point. As he walked through the atrium he spotted a familiar face.

“Lord Potter-Black, what a delight.” Madam Harlow said, walking towards him.

Harry kissed her offered hand. “Ah, Madam Harlow, it is good to see you again.”

It was surprisingly nice to speak to her again, and after some talk they decided to have some tea together; it was nearly lunchtime in any case. She led him to the side of the atrium, though a short hallway and steered him into a small café on the right.

“How is it going in the Wizengamot these days, I heard some very good things I must say.” Harry inquired politely when they sat down, waiting to be served.

It was indeed going rather well she informed him. The annulling of dubious laws was going faster than she had anticipated and when it came to current law all sorts of new alliances were forming. From what Harry understood she was part of the faction that was pro halfblood and muggleborn, but anti muggle. She seemed to view muggles like most muggles viewed lions; safe and interesting to look at from a distance, but you wouldn’t want to get up close without sufficient protection. It was interesting to listen to her talk about the new taskforce that her faction wanted to set up within the Muggle Liaison Office to see how muggle technology is progressing, and learning to counter it. Harry asked ample questions.

It was only when she started talking about her political allies when she faltered slightly, giving him a scrutinising look.

“One of the newer allies is Lord Malfoy.” She said slowly, trying to gauge Harry’s reaction. “His views are much more moderate than those of his late father, and although he is a separatist like most old families he is much more modern and forward thinking than one might expect.”

Harry gave her a little smile. “That is good to hear, I had heard from a friend he had become quite political active after serving his time in Azkaban and the house arrest, but I haven’t followed his carrier closely I’m afraid.”

It was strangely enough Luna who had told him all about Malfoy. After he had done his time in Azkaban she had struck up an unlikely friendship with the former Slytherin. It had been a long time now since the end of the war, and while some people had trouble letting go of such things, Harry prided himself on the way he had worked through events and part of that was letting go of old, childish grudges.

They had even exchanged a few owls; the first one had been an apology from Malfoy and an explanation (not an excuse) of why he had chosen to act as he did (Harry had heard a lot about how tyrannical the late Lord Malfoy had been at both Narcissa and Draco Malfoy’s trials, but some of the details in the letter were new). Harry had sent a note back, and returned his wand with a short explanation of how it had helped win the war.

So while Harry wouldn’t call them friends, they at least were now polite, and after a few more doubting looks when the name arose in the conversation he finally managed to assure Madam Harlow that he bore no grudges toward Narcissa or Draco.

After that the conversation flowed freely again, and Harry found himself telling her about his research in trying to establish a public library. She seemed most intrigued by the idea and assured him that as far as she knew there were no laws against starting such a place; as long as he made clear there was no connection to the ministry.

After lunch Harry said his goodbye and left with a tentative promise from both to keep in contact.

\--

Harry had already been suspicious when Ron had send him a note asking if it was okay if he floo-ed over later that evening straight from the ministry, but when Ron stepped out of the fireplace with a small crate in hand he knew that his stables would soon have a new addition.

Ron showed him the little lizards hiding in the cage somewhat bashfully, and assured him he wouldn’t even have to look after it. He just wanted to release it in the forest. He had a long and winded explanation about why the lizard couldn’t just be released in some other forest, but eventually summarised it as; ‘it would fudge up the ecosystem’. Apparently Harry’s forest had enough natural magic that it couldn’t do any harm here, so Harry finally shrugged and lead Ron outside to set the animal free.

“You know I do not mind occasionally taking on some animal that cannot find a place anywhere else, you do not have to be so cloak and dagger about it.”

Ron looked at him in surprise. “You don’t mind?”

Harry assured him he did not, he was rather happy with how the dogs and Morrigan had turned out. Besides, Ivy would quite like something else to care for.

Harry studied the little lizard and tried to come up with a name for it before they set it free. Harry was terrible at naming animals, and Ron didn’t let him forget it. The first one of his dogs that had let Harry name her was the leader. It ended up being a bit embarrassing, because he named her after he had just come back from visiting a muggle cinema, had a bit too much to drink, and had somehow thought that it would be a good idea to name her Khan. But the name stuck, and pretty soon after the other two allowed him to name them. The other female he called Pandora after some research and the male was named Ba, after one of the Chinese war gods.

Harry thought those were pretty decent names but Ron and Hermione seemed to disagree, at least Luna had liked them. The whole walk towards the forest Harry spend thinking of different and appropriate names for a lizard. He knew that just because he liked the names Godzilla or Xi for a lizard didn’t mean other people did.

“I was thinking either Pendragon or Smaug.” He told Ron when they reached the edge of the forest.

Ron gave him an aghast look and opened his mouth. But then he just closed it again and sighed.

“You know what, fine. Call him Smaug, I don’t care.” Ron said shaking his head. “Here, take the cage and set him free. Poor little bugger.”

Harry did just that, watching the little lizard scurry into the forest he felt somewhat smug that this time even Ron had agreed Smaug was a good name for the lizard.

\--

It worked! Harry grinned down at the small twig in delight. It had been a combination of small magic and earth-magic that had finally allowed him to grow this little magical plant from nothing. The spot had been carefully chosen; near a fairy circle where he left regular meat offerings (as per Luna’s advice) while still being close to flowing water and hawthorn trees. The ‘seed’ had been a little gleaming rock he had found on one of his jaunts through the forest and he had carried around with him for months, letting it soak up his magic. 

It had taken some delicate ritual work and the nerve wreaking carving of runes on the tiny rock to get here. Not to mention the amount of power it took to do several types of small magic to encourage the thing to sprout. But now Harry was proudly grinning down at his creation. It would eventually grow into a tree that would carry inside of it a bit of Harry. Long after Harry would pass this tree would live on, the magic enabling it to stand here for millennia.

Several fairies came from their hiding places to see what Harry had created, their sharp, hooked wings angled carefully away as not to destroy the little sapling. They did a happy little dance around it, and were now impressed enough to even try to include Harry into it. That inclusiveness lasted only until the next time he visited and forgot to bring a meat offering; their sharp wings and teeth ready for action as they chased him through the forest.


End file.
